It's a massive music release week with new stuff due from Grouper, Black Cracker, Tindersticks, Mark Rogers and Mary Byrne, Tarwater, and Oren Ambarchi, and old music due from Bruce Lacey, Tav Falco, and The Poison Girls.

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1972

STEREOLAB: Mars Audiac Quintet 2LP (IF 008LP)27.002012 release. "Mars Audiac Quintet saw Stereolab beginning to shed their experimental tendencies in favor of a post-modern space-age pop. The album exudes a sophisticated cool and catchiness that helped them gain new fans while straddling the line between their experimental-rock brethren and the ascending class of pre-millennial British pop. It's also the album that put them on the A-list of underground rock bands. Arguably the band's most accessible album, Mars Audiac Quintet not only features gentler textures than any of its predecessors, but also more upbeat and hooky songs such as 'Ping Pong' (the first Stereolab song to receive widespread video and alt radio airplay) and 'L'Enfer Des Formes,' not to mention groove-dominated tracks like 'Outer Accelerator' and 'Transona Five.'"

STEREOLAB: Emperor Tomato Ketchup 2LP (IF 009LP)27.002013 release. "'Stereolab's fourth full-length, Emperor Tomato Ketchup marked the point where the band evolved from a purely underground phenomenon to an important pop group capable of selling albums while keeping their hipness and integrity intact. At the time of its release, it was simultaneously their most experimental and most accessible release, with the deliberate raw textures of earlier works replaced by a more polished vibe. The album was also their greatest success to date both commercially and critically, and remains a consensus favorite even now. Continuing to mine the music of the '60s and early '70s, Stereolab employs Farfisas and Moogs, melodies from Bacharach and Hardy, soft-rock, bubblegum, dub and hip-hop sounds to augment their core influences of Krautrock, punk, jazz and space rock. Odd time-signatures and deft layering techniques are more crucial to the arrangements, and the grooves on tracks like 'Metronomic Underground' and 'Les Yper-Sound' add a level of funk to the mix, while the album also includes clear and catchy pop songs like 'Cybele's Reverie' and 'The Noise of Carpet.'"

STEREOLAB: Dots and Loops 2LP (IF 010LP)27.002013 release. "Dots and Loops is Stereolab's fifth studio album and the first to completely ditch the motorik drone that had been a trademark since their inception; predominated by lush lounge and jazz textures, it showcases the band's most complex set of rhythms yet. Stereolab is aided by members of The High Llamas (like-minded travelers in the production of whimsical '60s sounds), Jan St. Werner and Andi Toma of Mouse on Mars, and John McEntire of post-rock pioneers Tortoise. The album was recorded in Chicago and Düsseldorf and bridges a unique American-Euro influence. The new rhythmic approach separates Dots and Loops from the band's previous output, as does a Beach Boys influence which adds to the band's standard brand. Bossa Nova and '60s Euro pop are still major touchstones and give the album a deceptively light vibe; however, further listens reveal an elaborate work, with almost every track featuring odd time-signatures and more complicated and layered arrangements. 'Parsec' is space-rock meets drum and bass; 'Brakhage' marries a minor key bass line to clinking vibes and a shuffling beat; the segmented, 20-minute 'Refractions in the Plastic Pulse' is sunny and appealing, yet intricately constructed."

4 MEN WITH BEARDS

GRAHAM, ERNIE: Ernie Graham LP (4M 227LP)19.00"This is the self-titled debut album by former Eire Apparent member Ernie Graham that was originally released in 1971. Backed by Nick Lowe and Brinsley Schwarz, this is an underground roots rock classic that sounds like it could have been a lost album by The Band in their prime. Opening with the beautiful, Dylanesque folk number 'Sebastian,' the album kicks into gear on tracks like 'So Lonely' and 'Don't Want Me Around' and ends with the song 'Belfast,' which takes us home to Ernie's roots in Ireland. All Music's Bruce Elder has called this record 'one of the great albums (and perhaps the greatest unknown album) of the 1970s.' Pressed on 180 gram vinyl."

INVISIBLE HANDS, THE: Teslam CD (ABDT 054CD)15.00"The Invisible Hands is a transcontinental collaboration between Alvarius B. (Alan Bishop of Sun City Girls) and four stellar young musicians from Cairo, Egypt: Cherif El Masri, Aya Hemeda (both formerly of the popular Egyptian group Eskenderella), Adham Zidan and Magued Nagati. On Teslam, The Invisible Hands expand the already panoramic range of their eponymous debut LP with a haunting set of melodic, impeccably crafted songs whose vintage psych/hard-rock edge conjures up early Alice Cooper almost as often as it recalls Sun City Girls and 20th-century icons like Ennio Morricone and Serge Gainsbourg. The band's exquisite sonic palette is deepened by Cairo-based guest musicians Mohamed Ibrahim, Mohamed 'Moe' Asem, and Sammy Sayed, as well as by longtime SCG compatriot Eyvind Kang. Recorded in Cairo between 2013 and 2014, Teslam represents a further evolution of Alvarius B.'s peerlessly idiosyncratic pop sensibility, which is just as volatile and unclassifiable as his more experimental work. His songwriting -- both on his own, and in partnership with Cherif El Masri -- is marked by a unity of purpose that has compressed countless musical and emotional incongruities into a handful of sharp-edged, pitch-black jewels. A brooding track composed by keyboardist Adham Zidan ('The Great Implosion') perfectly complements the record's uneasy mood. As usual, Alvarius B.'s lyrics comprise an apocalyptic pile-up of cruel metaphors at the intersection of culture, politics and international crime. But they take on new power and new implications as sung by El Masri and Hemeda, whose seductive voices are as inviting as a welcome mat at the gates of hell. Each song stands on its own while also fitting into a planet-sized jigsaw puzzle detailing dark associations and secret narratives that stretch back as far as the foundation of the world. Arguably Alvarius B.'s most accessible work to date, Teslam is a generously baited steel-jaw trap for the unwary listener. Like The Invisible Hands' 2013 debut, Teslam inevitably reflects the precarious political circumstances in which it was conceived and recorded. As such, it's a vivid document not just of an unlikely musical collaboration, but also of a critical moment of hope, defiance, rage and sorrow in one of the world's most venerable cities. [This limited-edition razor-edged stainless-steel CD comes in a beautiful die cut balsawood jacket that folds out to form a fully operational guillotine. Just kidding, but it does come as a digipak CD with lyrics booklet and lovely artwork]." --B. Kearney

AGARIC

BORBETOMAGUS: Snuff Jazz CD (AGARIC 1988CD)15.00Reissue of Snuff Jazz, a vicious installment originally released on LP in 1990, with one previously unreleased track and an untitled track previously released on COS tapes in 1990. Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich on saxophones, Donald Miller on guitar. The first three selections were recorded at the art gallery and performance space ABC No Rio in New York's lower Lower East Side on November 24, 1988. The occasion for the concert was the opening night of an exhibition of paintings by Carl George and Valerie Caris. The fourth selection was recorded at DC Space, in Washington, DC on August 25,1989. "It is hard to believe that it has been twenty years since my ass warmed a bench in the dungeon at ABC No Rio. Back in the day, it was dicey on the streets of the dank and decaying Lower East Side, streets riddled with drug dealers and abandoned buildings. A couple of drinks at the opening, and it was high time for a good aural irrigation. The boys gently ascended to their cruising altitude, and the sonic bursts pierced the damp masonry walls and every human eardrum in reach. The fans drooled, and the uninitiated, like the soccer players of Chernobyl, stared in awe of this enfolding, life-threatening disaster and grit-crunching ass-kick machine. The dogs were howling this night! Remove all other living critters from the house, pour yourself a double single-malt scotch, turn the volume of your stereo to twelve, and enjoy as your ears are acid-etched." -- Michael Hanke

ALGA MARGHEN (ITALY)

TAZARTES, GHEDALIA: Les Danseurs de la Pluie 3" CD (TES 063CD)16.502006 release. Les Danseurs de la Pluie, which gives title to the complete anthology, is a 12-minute mini-CD, presented on creative disc, including four previously-unavailable tracks. Two 1977 killer recordings from the "Eclipse Totale" sessions of a very wild and residential nature; and two colossal new pieces recorded in 2005.

BRUHIN, ANTON: Vom Goldabfischer CD (TES 066CD)19.502008 release. Alga Marghen presents for the first time on CD the classic experimental folk recordings from Anton Bruhin with the same title first issued on LP in 1969. Anton Bruhin conceived some of the most original sonic art musiks, a double of his artistic work as an outsider painter, and with the help of Stefan Wittwer on electric guitar and Cristian Koradi on bass and cello, recorded this masterpiece of far-out sonorities well hidden in the Swiss mountains. Anton Bruhin sings and plays jew's harp (his favorite instrument), ch-phon (an instrument he invented, constructed with a PVC tube with saxophone reed), harmonica, flute, fiddle, percussion, and water. This record, surely one of the most psychedelic, experimental and private to be issued in Europe in the 1960s, should be of great influence for the actual renaissance of experimental folk music. Surely it was an important source of magick for Steven Stapleton, so no surprise to see it mentioned in the mythical list of references that Nurse With Wound included in their first LP. This CD edition also includes five jew's harp instrumental tracks. In the late 1970s, Anton Bruhin was asked to edit a record of folk and ethnic music, documenting the use of jew's harp in Switzerland. Bruhin climbed up the mountains in order to record some of the most obscure, old jew's harp players. Those mysterious sounds were issued in 1979 on a record titled Maultrommel, Mundhermonika, Kamm. This CD includes three solo jew's harp tracks where Anton Bruhin plays themes from the Vom Goldabfischer LP, plus two massive, maximal and resonating duos with W. Gwerder, recorded in 1979 at Radio Schweiz International. Beautiful digipack sleeve with photos and liner notes, also including a folded insert reproducing lyrics, technical notes and a group of ink drawings originally created for the Vom Goldabfischer LP sleeve.

ANGRY MOM RECORDS

ZOUMBAS, ALEXIS: A Lament for Epirus, 1926-1928 CD (AMA 004CD)13.50Restocked. "Alexis Zoumbas' expressions of longing are so raw and unmediated that I suspect anyone who has ever yearned for anything -- who has ever gazed dolefully out a window, or sighed audibly over a cup of whiskey, or felt subsumed by a certain kind of ache -- will feel these songs like a club to the back of the knees. They are immediate, destructive, and stunning. That Christopher King was able to collect and contain them for us is an extraordinary gift." --Amanda Petrusich; Years of research and obsession have resulted in this, the first collection of recordings by the legendary and masterful Greek folk violinist Alexis Zoumbas. Very few pre-War musicians have tapped deeper into the human soul than Zoumbas and this volume presents his most profoundly hypnotic and unearthly pieces. A deep set of notes is accompanied by previously-unpublished photographs as well as original artwork by R. Crumb. Respectfully crafted by Christopher King and Susan Archie for Angry Mom Records.

ANOTHER PICTURE (GERMANY)

LOSOUL: Immanent EP 12" (APP 000EP)12.50Losoul introduces a series of fine yet outstanding pieces of music. Based on classic sound production, this release opens a space for a wide range of musical exposure. There is the raw energy of "BZA," consisting of rolling beats and bass lines with sounds from the acidic realm being presented to the restless dancefloors by true originators' poetry. Believe that. This is counterparted by "Sediments," a jam from nowhere else but the deep. Down here, many things you might have taken for being lost remain in the abstract vibe and the groove. It's all in there.

APOTEK RECORDS (DENMARK)

VA: Evergreen (EP) 12" (APT 021EP)14.00This is the next installation of the acclaimed Editopia Series. Jerome Sydenham's edit of the Technasia classic "Evergreen" was executed with the delicate hand of an experienced surgeon. The result -- an immensely powerful and primordial techno track. A2. sees seasoned veteran tackle David Alvarado's masterfully deep "Ysleta" as the next addition, embracing the darkest elements and taking you on a downward spiral into a techno abyss. Master Ron Trent's opus "Skylinez" is a soaring expression of a sophisticated soul-tech motivated house track that can walk many paths.

ARAS (GERMANY)

ANDRE GALLUZZI & GUIDO SCHNEIDER/DANIEL STEFANIK: Trambolla Rmixes 12" (ARAS 005EP)12.50Together with Guido Schneider, André Galluzzi presents the "Trambolla" remixes. The first remix is a percussive and mystic club-crasher. Urban drums meet the wideness of electronic sound. The second remix features Daniel Stefanik, who forms a moony fairy-tale with soft bell elements in an arrangement full of harmony and space. A great tool for the after-hour.

SANTE: Current CD (AV 001CD)14.00It is said that an artist's first collection of work is a self-portrait -- a surreptitious sonic glimpse into their life and soul, delving deeper than even the most intimate DJ set. Current, Santé's debut album, is certainly no exception, as he invites and entices the listener into discovering what lies beneath the surface of this enigmatic and energetic DJ and producer. As the Berlin-based maestro's own persona grows in both popularity and notoriety, and his budding AVOTRE label goes from strength to strength, the timing couldn't be better for Santé to release his sophomore LP. Over 10 future-facing tracks, Santé displays a deft production skill that manages to surpass even his reputation for raising a dancefloor. The album is rich in styles and genres, from honest, melody-drenched cuts, such as title-track "Intimacy," to heavier club rollers like "Momentary," and the decadent, groove-infused "Tongue." Tracks such as "Turn Up," which features vocals from Russoul, show him deftly straddling the genres of jacking house and emotive melody. All are infused with a continuous and engaging sense of rhythm, which sees Santé weave a consistent, compelling narrative through the record. Santé is a team player -- as anyone will know who has ever caught one of his electrifying back-to-back sets with fellow AVOTRE label-mate Sidney Charles. Here we see him continue to expose his chameleonic abilities as he teams up with a number of other talents for this full-length debut, including Russoul, J.U.D.G.E. and Steve Smith (from Dirty Vegas). The album wraps up with one bonus cut of the elegiac "Awake," by heavyweight techno legend Agoria. The best music always tugs at the heartstrings, and this remix is a true example, aligning hypnotic keys with melancholic vocals. This low-key finale personifies Santé's, and Current's insistence in never compromising on quality. Current is a deep insight into the artistry and imagination of a talented producer and represents an important chapter in Santé's ever-growing career.

BECAUSE MUSIC (FRANCE)

CONNAN MOCKASIN: Forever Dolphin Love LP (BEC 5772852)23.002014 repress. LP version of Forever Dolphin Love with bonus download code for the live version. Connan Mockasin has the kind of deliciously off-kilter and gloriously idiosyncratic worldview that rapidly proves addictive. Welcome, folks, to the delightful, slanted and enchanted world of Connan Mockasin. Like David Lynch's willfully surrealist take on American suburbia, or Richard Prince's paintings investigating modern cultural tropes, the New Zealand-born, current London resident Mockasin makes beautiful music which subverts as it compels, challenges as it mesmerizes, startles as it seduces, even drawing fans as diverse as Johnny Marr and Radiohead to Ed Banger chief and ex-Daft Punk manager Pedro Winter into its wide-eyed, childlike exploration into the final frontiers of pop music. It is all too rare, in this current climate of manufactured pop acts, grey, over-produced "alternative" guitar music and press-fuelled mania for the next-big-thing, to hear something truly striking and original, but a strong case can most certainly be made for Connan to be a true pop auteur, taking his rightful place in a proud lineage which includes past mavericks such as Joe Meek and Brian Wilson, right through to current cult heroes like Ariel Pink, Sufjan Stevens and John Maus. Written from start to finish one hot summer, while camped outside his parent's church-like house in a tent, Forever Dolphin Love is an LP which brims with the beauty and solitude of summer evenings, a miasma of psychedelic tangents, jazz interludes and echoing guitars which hum with a distant, haunting resonance. For apart from being one of the most singular musicians we currently have, he is also a brilliant and unusual painter, a gift which will be glimpsed for the first time with this album, which features a collection of wonderfully surreal paintings of dolphins, all bold and beautiful interpretations of the mammal, but evolved into human forms, smiling in gaggles, sometimes wearing clothes, sometimes swathed in pools of lush colors. Connan's talents also include recording, producing and mixing the entire record. It was this brilliantly ingenious approach to invention, and his masterfully unique charm that caught the attention of Erol Alkan, who signed Connan to his label Phantasy and released his first output Please Turn Me Into The Snat.

CUT HANDS: Festival of the Dead CD (BLACKEST 010CD)16.50It is said that the gods of the dead demand you ritualistically commit to each intensely hot beat of the ceremonial drum. Now, here, is the music for their celebration of death, music to dance together with, to oblivion, a music both spectacular and ecstatic where, like never before, the spirits of Santería and Voudou mix with raw electricity into burning diabolical polyrhythms. Festival of the Dead is without doubt the most potent distillation yet of Cut Hands' malign percussive energy, with pieces like "The Claw" and "Vaudou Take Me High" leading the irresistible polyrhythmic assault in pursuit of one thing: a final rapturous celebration of oblivion. Written and produced by William Bennett.

BOYSNOIZE RECORDS (GERMANY)

OCTAVE MINDS: Octave Minds 2LP+CD (BNR 130LP)23.50Octave Minds is a collaborative album by Boys Noize and Chilly Gonzales. Double LP includes a CD of the album and a poster, in a deluxe textured gatefold. Gonzales is the singer/songwriter/pianist known for his collaborations with Daft Punk, Drake, and Peaches. The album features a track called "Tap Dance", which features Chance the Rapper.

BUREAU B (GERMANY)

DEUTSCHE WERTARBEIT: Deutsche Wertarbeit CD (BB 047CD)17.00There are times when the name of a musical project is in perfect harmony with the sounds emanating from it. And there are times when it is not. Take the 1981 album Deutsche Wertarbeit by keyboarder and composer Dorothea Raukes, which is rather an example of the latter. No stomping of military marches, as the title may imply, but six beautiful synthesizer treasures gathered together on the only solo album she would release, artfully unifying the so-called Düsseldorf School (Kraftwerk, etc.), the Berliner School (Tangerine Dream, etc.) and elements of Jean Michel Jarre's music with the sounds of the inceptive 1980s. From the hypnotic to the cosmic, sometimes pulsating, sometimes evincing saccharine melancholy. The cool, almost technical artwork does not really fit the warm, sensitive music, either. Dorothea Raukes was not exactly an unknown quantity when the album appeared. She had been playing keyboards and writing for the Düsseldorf rock band Streetmark for years. The group -- as was typical of the period -- operated on democratic principles, which meant that she was never quite able to follow through on her own musical ideas one hundred percent. A solo album, however, would allow her to do just that. One of the reasons why it turned out to be a purely electronic album was Raukes' sponsorship deal with Korg, giving her access to the full range of the company's gear. Listening to Deutsche Wertarbeit, those familiar with the history of Streetmark will find themselves reminded of Wolfgang Riechmann's solo LP Wunderbar (BB 027CD/LP), which appeared three years earlier and traced a similar musical pattern. Wolfgang Riechmann himself had been a member of Streetmark not all that long ago. Nonetheless, the two projects were entirely separate and had no immediate influence on each other.

TARWATER: Adrift LP+CD (BB 183LP)25.00LP version. CD of full album included. "The Berlin-based electronic duo Tarwater (Ronald Lippok and Bernd Jestram) formed in 1995. They have produced 11 regular studio albums and various collaborations (e.g. with Piano Magic, Tuxedomoon, B. Fleischmann), as well as numerous film and theater scores. Lippok also plays in the band To Rococo Rot. File under: indietronics, neo-Krautrock. Their new album Adrift is an album of voices and rhythms, with an atmosphere that may at first seem reduced, yet further listening reveals a wealth of detail. Adrift was created in 2013/2014 and completed after Ronald Lippok and Bernd Jestram worked together with Maurus Ronner on the soundtrack for the documentary 24h Jerusalem. Tarwater encourage the state of being Adrift. The cover of the album shows the empty field of the former Berlin airport at Tempelhof, photographed by Robert Lippok. Adrift is a dream diary; its characters act not as in fantasy, but reality. Tarwater agree when the album is described as 'somnambulist.' Adrift contains 13 songs, four of which are instrumentals. The opening track, 'The Tape,' is an introduction to the sonic landscape of the album. Drum 'n' bass in slow motion: a recurring hissing sound meets an acoustic bass and associative percussion. The drum kit in the traditional rock format is conspicuous in its absence. Tarwater, who particularly in the British music press are happily and quite fittingly placed in the tradition of the Krautrock of the '70s, tap into a different close relative on Adrift. Robert Wyatt, with his jazz filtered through progressive rock, comes to mind. Adrift is one of the few Tarwater albums not to feature a cover version. Instead there are four assimilations of texts by befriended and esteemed poets: 'Homology, Myself' is by the Viennese-Berliner poetess Ann Cotten, quoted from 'Dichten = N. 10. 16 New (To American Readers) Poets.' She speaks of the impossible task of being a robot. The rhythmic backdrop, in which Tarwater install Cotten's lecture is anything but mechanical. The lyrics to 'They Told Me in the Alley' also come from Ann Cotten and Kerstin Cmelka. The title suggests something rather pastoral, yet we hear as Ronald Lippok's voice travels through different room ambiences. 'Log of the Sloop' and 'The Evening Pilgrims' are taken from the collection The Man Who Had Forgotten the Name of Trees by Milner Place. Adrift finishes on an ethereal note: 'Rice and Fish' features a cameo by Sabrina Milena alias Milenasong. Milena provides the shimmering background to Ronald Lippok's laconic vocals, alongside psychedelic guitar sounds, electronic loops and a bossa nova rhythm. Minimalism sounds different." --Marek Flohner

COLE, LLOYD: Kollektion 02: Roedelius - Electronic Music Compiled by Lloyd Cole LP (BB 187LP)25.00LP version. About this Kollektion: British songwriter Lloyd Cole has long since been a fan of Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Cluster. For convincing evidence, one need look no further than his 2001 album Plastic Wood, a purely electronic opus which was an unambiguous homage to his musical idols. In 2013, Cole and Roedelius actually joined forces to release their Selected Studies Vol. 1 album (BB 124CD/LP). Cole has now listened through the Hans-Joachim Roedelius solo archives to present his favorite synthesizer or organ pieces in Bureau B's Kollektion series. About Hans-Joachim Roedelius: Hans-Joachim Roedelius, born in Berlin 1934; released his first album 1969 with Kluster (with Dieter Moebius and Conrad Schnitzler). Active ever since as a solo artist and in various collaborations. One of the most prolific musicians of the German avant-garde and a key figure in the birth of Krautrock, synthesizer pop and ambient music. Roedelius entered the world of music in 1967 when he and Conrad Schnitzler founded the Berlin performance club Zodiak Free Arts Lab, thereby launching the careers of numerous "Berlin School" musicians (Tangerine Dream, Ash Ra Tempel, Klaus Schulze, etc). Schnitzler and Roedelius later got together with Dieter Moebius to record two seminal albums under the name of Kluster. Schnitzler quit the trio not long afterwards, the other two continuing to release albums as Cluster at irregular intervals until 2009. Hans-Joachim Roedelius has also been active as a solo artist and has collaborated with countless musical partners including Brian Eno, Holger Czukay, Michael Rother, Stefan Schneider and Tim Story, to list just a brief selection. He played on around 170 record productions either as a soloist or with band projects. Some 1,600 musical works bear his name, plus a similar number of texts (poetry, prose etc.) Lloyd Cole on Roedelius: "It was 1977. First came Bowie's Low, then Eno's Before and After Science, which led me to Cluster and Eno, released earlier that year. What a year to be 16 years old! Cluster and Eno led me to Can and Neu!, et al, but none of this so-called Krautrock had the je ne sais quoi that was the essence of Cluster. Sowiesoso pulsed and spat and gurgled with warmth and humor which gave it a resonance beyond this otherwise dry and clever music, which at its worst might seem to smirk downwards towards the listener. Instead, Sowiesoso wore a wry, welcoming smile. It said: Maybe we can spend some time together, maybe we'll be friends, maybe we won't, listen to this, see what you think ... I'm still listening. Cluster led me to Harmonia and then Roedelius' solo works which led me to believe that the soul I was finding in Cluster which seemed so absent from their peers came primarily from him. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the way I hear it. The melodic sensibility which drew me in is his, for sure. Roedelius' voice is unique, instantly recognizable, and still resonates. Almost 40 years later, here I am curating a Roedelius collection. Which makes me very happy. I hope you enjoy it." --Lloyd Cole, 2014

CADENZA (GERMANY)

SQUILLACE, DAVIDE: Goiania 12" (CADENZA 097EP)14.00Italian DJ and producer Davide Squillace has conjured up some inventive and dancefloor-centric minimal electronic music with this EP for Cadenza. On "Goiania," Squillace opens up a highly musical pot of orchestral stabs and brass hits, morphing bottom-end and freestyle synth licks, cavorting around a steady percussive beat to great effect. On "Blossom," pizzicato synths play a call-and-response with dramatic strings while an electro-tinged drum pattern and sizzling hats lay the foundations of a track with more than a nod to classic house sounds. "Unit 9" closes the release, and Squillace goes on a galactic ride through meteoric bleeps and humongous pads for a cosmic techno number.

N.E.W.: Motion LP (DWR 008LP)23.00Motion is the new full-length studio album by London-based power-jazz trio of Steve Noble on drums, John Edwards on double bass and Alex Ward on electric guitar. This trio has played together for over a decade and have become one of London's tightest units, locking in and breaking apart with uncanny telepathy and synchronicity. Operating at the junction of free improv and rock, they swing and shred in equal measure. Both modes, and the effortless, deft moves across the spaces between, are represented in fine style on this release. Live, N.E.W. seem to embody the classic power trio -- whether we're talking jazz or rock, it's the power that counts. Alex on guitar contorts wildly, both sonically and physically, thrashing in his chair to the death metal moves in his head, Steve sits rock-steady and immutable at his drum kit, other than his limbs, which form a chaotic blur, producing the most precise of sounds, and John has eyes tight shut and explores, brutalizes, and caresses every facet of his bass. This record is as close as you get to the incomparably exhilarating experience of seeing N.E.W. play live. Beautifully recorded with fine attention to detail, Motion puts you within a headbanging flick of Alex's bouffant hair, within the blast-zone of that power that has shaken the walls many times at all of London's long-standing improv nights, within infectious distance of the evident joy that these three musicians bring to creating this sound, moment by unrepeatable moment. Recorded at Eastcote Studios, London and pressed on heavyweight 180 gram black vinyl in a limited edition of 300. It comes packaged in hand-screenprinted wrap-around sleeves, featuring ancient cave drawings chosen specifically by Steve Noble for this release. The insert features liner notes by Thurston Moore.

AMBARCHI & ELI KESZLER, OREN: Alps LP (DWR 009LP)23.00Dancing Wayang Records is thrilled to announce the imminent release of the label's ninth album -- Alps by Oren Ambarchi & Eli Keszler; a fresh yet seemingly inevitable collaboration of two musicians kicking against limits and genre definitions, recorded and presented with a similar disregard for anything but quality. Alps was recorded in June 2013 at Eastcote Studios in London. Thereafter mixed by frequent Ambarchi associate Joe Talia in Melbourne and mastered by Rashad Becker in Berlin, it comes pressed on 180 gram black virgin vinyl housed in the label's traditional hand-screenprinted wrap-around sleeves featuring cover art by Eli Keszler. Liner notes come courtesy of U.S. musician C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core). Two vinyl-side-long pieces that mix improv, noise, rock, and drone, this is never an easy listen but always a compelling one. Both musicians are compulsive collaborators, with individual oeuvres that span all those genres and others yet to be labeled, and this album reflects and distills their hard-working heritage. They have a similar approach to questioning the fundamentals and exploring the sonic properties of their chosen instruments in a way that is informed by musical theory and learning but manifests itself in a defiantly non-academic, visceral and physical sound, both in intent and experience. Listening to Alps is a discomforting, uneasy and massively rewarding exercise, which denies the listener any steady ground on which to stand. This is evident from the moment that "Alps I" kicks off with piercing bowed cymbals. Percussive elements emerge from deep in the mix, drums without rhythm nor meter. Background and foreground shift tectonically and queasily. A chopping helicopter pulse hovers omnipresently over the battlefield of attacking drums and splintery bass beneath. It is a liquescent, rolling, never-still 20 minutes of multiple musical narratives. From the outset side B upholds the intensity. The conflagration of "Alps II" comes off like a tribute to classic Japanese psych; guitar proudly and consistently in the red, tsunamis of drum rolls. It has a defiant crudeness and rawness to its attack, which belies the intelligence needed to create such a rough-edged sound, the deftness needed to keep the truck-driving momentum on the road. 500 copies worldwide limited edition, pressed on 180 gram vinyl.

DESOLAT (GERMANY)

PULSHAR: Blood and Mathematics LP (DESOLAT 007LP)23.00LP version. Includes printed inner sleeve and download code for vocal and instrumental versions. Pulshar return to Desolat with another stunning long player filled with a selection of sumptuous productions that further demonstrate their grasp over intimate and deeply ethereal electronic music. The Barcelona-based duo of Pablo Bolivar and Sergio Sainz Vidal have cemented the Pulshar name and reputation as a proponent of dub-heavy, soulful, and, at times, psychedelic electronic music. Their first Desolat long player Inside received critical acclaim and effortlessly bridged the gap between the dancefloor and the home listening environment. They returned to Desolat in 2013 with the deliciously deep and trippy EP Different Drum, and now continue their relationship with the label with Blood and Mathematics. Pulshar maintain their affair with electro, instrumental hip-hop, dub, and psychedelia, distilling these to create a distinctive and soulful brand of electronic music. The new long player represents where the artists are in 2014: all the tracks are written and produced by them, with only one guest appearance: Guti as a featured artist on "Running Away." Blood and Mathematics offers a traditional album experience in which one track effortlessly segues into the next, taking the listener through a range of emotions across the record. Perfectly timed for when the days begin to draw to a close, Blood and Mathematics is a contemporary electronic music listening experience that will be revisited again and again.

DIAGONAL (UK)

HASWELL, RUSSELL: Double A 12" (DIAG 013EP)16.50Russell Haswell strikes bone on this 2-track, 20-minute 12", marking his return to the catalytic Diagonal imprint. Double A renders Russell at his slyest and most honest, presenting spasmodic, un-edited improvisations belying influence from the pivotal epoch of diamond-cut '80s freestyle, industrial and Detroit techno. Depending on your perspective, they're either splintered, techy DJ tools or skeletal nO!se inversions. Either way, they bristle and spark with a compulsive nervous energy and disciplined impulse control that's Haswell to the core: challenging, uncompromising and bloody crucial.

DIRT CREW (GERMANY)

DETROIT SWINDLE: Boxed Out: The Remixes 12" (DIRT 083EP)14.00Dirt Crew presents more of Detroit Swindle's Boxed Out (DIRT 006CD/LP) goodness. The boys have selected some of their fave producers to lay their hands on four originals from the album. First up is Jamie Odell, who delivers a deep reinterpretation of "B.Y.O." under his Jimpster moniker. This is followed by MRSK, who boosts the banging "He's Just This Guy, You Know?" to even higher levels with a raw disco and funk infusion. Cuthead drops his great skills on the smooth "Me, Myself & You," followed in closing with Karizma aka Kaytronik, whose take on the album hip-hop jam "For the Love Of..." is something special.

DISCOTEXAS (PORTUGAL)

XINOBI: 1975 CD (DT 044CD)15.50It was about time Xinobi released his debut album. Building his name on the back of successful singles like "Best of Me" (Work It Baby) or "Puma" (Discotexas), 1975 gets him ahead of his peers with an original way of making dance tracks you can actually listen to at home. 1975 is special. It's Xinobi's debut album and it pretty much summarizes his recent and diverse approach to music. It has organic house music and disco flavors mixed with a strong, yet idiosyncratic pop sensibility that stands out of what could be too obvious on a dance music-oriented record. For 54 minutes, you're driven by a simultaneously homogeneous and diverse collection of songs that range from contemplative intimate moments to memorable choruses that gather tons of people singing and clapping soulfully. It's a dissimulated, anthemic record, but it stands as much more than that. Imagine the roughness of Caribou merged with Ennio Morricone-ish ambiences; the fragmental DJ Koze deep trips with sunny Lisbon as a background; Spaghetti Disco or Supermax on Jamaican dub. Surf guitar and deep house. Simple and dense. Humble and nerdy. It's all of these glued onto a great combo in an intelligent and contemporary way.

ANTONA, MARC: Rattle Snaps EP 12" (DISS 023EP)12.50Dissonant founder Marc Antona presents two grand journeys that reach into the deepest parts of his musical psyche. In "Rattle Snaps" he turns out a seductive bass line and a captivating beat drawing on his strength in layering up ingenious sonic details. The stripped-back feel of the track supports scattered drum hits with skillful and subtle touches while the energy rises and falls without breaking the immersive atmosphere. Stretching out over twelve gripping minutes on the B-side, "The Fifth Season" is a powerful track with strong sub-bass ripples and a rising pad tone.

DIYNAMIC (GERMANY)

ADRIATIQUE: Rollox EP 12" (DIYNAMIC 072EP)14.00DJ and production duo Adrian Schweizer and Adrian Shala aka Adriatique are back with more on home label Diynamic. The title-track is a tough, tense bit of tech with dark voices, sinewy synths and groaning bass lines. "Numb" is a deep and shadowy house track with smart synths, lots of filters and spooky melodies -- an intergalactic delight that takes you to another world. "Ion" is a morelively but just as deep track that comes from another galaxy. Sci-fi effects, smooth drums and somber, Vangelis-like synths all make this a perfectly future-sounding track that will create lots of drama on the dancefloor.

DOXY (RUSSIAN FEDERATION)

HERRMANN, BERNARD: Alfred Hitchcock's Movie Soundtracks 4LP (DOY 003LP)70.002014 restock. "This 4 album set includes the original mono soundtrack to Hitchcock's The Wrong Man (1956), and the original stereo soundtracks to Vertigo (1958) and North by Northwest (1959) by Bernard Herrmann, one of the greatest film composers in the history of cinema. Besides working with Hitchcock, he wrote the scores to several other classics: Citizen Kane, Taxi Driver, and Cape Fear, to name a few. Not to mention working with Orson Welles back in the days of radio, and even directing the music to the ill-fated War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938. However, unlike most other musical directors, Herrmann insisted on complete creative control over his music and once said, 'I have the final say, or I don't do the music'. Herrmann also said that Hitchcock would in fact astonishingly shorten or lengthen the scenes to fit his music. Do not miss these classic soundtracks to some of Hitchcock's best films." Deluxe 4-fold gatefold 4LP set featuring extensive sleeve notes about each score and pictures of the original movie posters.

VA: Southern Folk Heritage Series by Alan Lomax 7LP BOX (DOY 009LP)158.002014 restock. "7LP box set of authentic field recordings made by Alan Lomax (and British folk singer Shirley Collins) in 1959 for Atlantic Records. Meant as a kind of follow-up to Alan and his father John Lomax's legendary work for the Library of Congress in the 1930s, Lomax (now with hi-fi stereo equipment) once again set out for the Southern states on a two month long tour that resulted in over 80 hours of recordings. The recordings were divided by genre and released in 1960 as a series of 7 LPs now available in one deluxe box set with a 16-page booklet. LP1: Sounds of the South presents a broad scope of folk ballads of Elizabethan origin, Negro instrumental music almost purely African in sound, 'white spirituals,' field hollers, levee camp songs and 'blue grass' mountain music. LP2: Blue Ridge Mountain Music features some of the best folk singers, fiddlers, banjo and guitar players that Alan Lomax found in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, such as the Mountain Ramblers. LP3: Roots Of The Blues explores the older Negro blues styles that antedate the modern, commercial blues. LP4: White Spirituals showcases a variety of rare recordings by the white mountain folk, including the choral singing of the Alabama 'Sacred Harp' Singers. LP5: American Folk Songs For Children is twenty one songs, jingles, riddles, game songs, lullabies, jiggy tunes and silly ballads that belonged to children of the American frontier. LP6: Negro Church Music is a soul-stirring collection of Negro spirituals and gospel songs recorded in many out-of-the-way places in the South. LP7: The Blues Roll On deals with more modern types of country blues, both vocal and instrumental, featuring artists such as Forest City Joe, an Arkansas honky-tonk discovery of Alan Lomax."

EDITION OMEGA POINT (JAPAN)

MINAMI, HIROAKI: Obscure Tape Music of Japan Vol. 19: Kumo no Ito (The Spider's Thread) CD (OPA 019CD)25.50"Kumo no Ito" (trans. "The Spider's Thread): "In 1977 I started the project of a musical piece for a female narrator and 4-channel electronic sounds using the text of the well-known Akutagawa novel. I worked with a hand-made analog synthesizer which had been installed two years before in my home studio in Tokyo. Needless to say, the editing was done without digital machines. I worked with the recorded tapes together with scissors and splicing tape. It was the resonance-adding apparatus that I operated which was very important as a sound effect. The part for the synthesizer was made manually, recording the short fragments and collecting them onto one tape through several tape recorders. My studio was full of a lot of tape fragments. I think the situation in those days was stupendous but I didn't feel distress. The manual procedure was usual at that time, so I could rather enjoy the process of advancing towards the goal step by step. After the long term of manual work, I completed a 4-channel 10" tape of 7mm width which should be played 38cm per second. The original novel Kumo no Ito was translated into several languages. I have worked with the text narrations in German, French and Italian etc., but now I have only the German version recording." --Hiroaki Minami (Reading: Setsuko Kawauchi)."Chaos": "In 1966 I composed a piece of concrète music titled "Taiyo-fu" (trans. "Solar Wind"). It was to be staged as a performance by the Tokyo-based Mieko Fuji Dance Company. The dance performance participated in the National Arts Festival of Agency for Cultural Affairs. The stage concept was to create a new modern dance which suggested that the sun would be perpetually pouring all the energy of light, heat and wind to the earth. I made the music by manipulating the materials of the recorded instrumental sounds, not of the concrète sounds. With the idea of applying the editing and modifying methods of concrète music to the recorded instrumental sounds, I had started with composing a lot of fragments, and then I played them and recorded in our recording studio. Some students from the Tokyo College of Music, where I worked as a teacher, helped me as musical performers. The recorded sound materials were operated in my private studio. Manipulating several tape recorders, I tried to produce the sounds that could not be identified as the original instruments. Thus I created the 70-minute stage music. Fifty years have passed and the digital technology is now easy to access. But I remember the process of my manual operation and I can't wipe the commitment to the music of "Taiyo-fu." Nevertheless, I think the music is too monotonous to be appreciated without dance. So I re-constructed a piece with the sound materials of "Taiyo-fu." The basic idea concerns the cosmic world and the title of the piece is "Chaos." This "Chaos" comes from my illusions about the primordial universe. --Hiroaki Minami; English translated by Mimako Mizuno. Cardboard paper gatefold sleeve. Newly-written liner notes by the artist in Japanese & English. Limited edition of 300 copies.

MATSUDAIRA, TAKASHI: Experimental Music of Japan Vol. 13: Extended Voices CD (OPX 013CD)23.50Omega Point had obtained the original tape recording of "Extended Voices" composed by Toshi Ichiyanagi (first released by Odyssey/Columbia in 1967 on the compilation of the same name, alongside other pieces for voice & electronics by Pauline Oliveros, Morton Feldman, John Cage, Robert Ashley and Alvin Lucier). The piece consists of electronic sounds and modulated voices which are included on this album in two new 2014 realizations, in collaboration with Takashi Matsudaira, a baritone singer. The CD also adds experimental pieces selected by Matsudaira as well as his own original work, allowing the label to construct "an anthology of extended voices," partially as an homage to the original LP. Features Toshi Ichiyanagi's "Extended Voices (New Version #1)" (1967/2014); John Cage's "Ryoanji" (1983-1985), Takashi Matsudaira's "Shiroi Shojo (A Girl in White) (2014); Shigeru Matsui's "*" (2007); Toshi Ichiyanagi's "Extended Voices (New Version #2) (1967/2014). Housed in a cardboard paper gatefold sleeve. Includes newly-written liner notes in Japanese and English by the artist. Limited edition of 350 copies.

EDITIONS MEGO (AUSTRIA)

AMBARCHI, OREN: Quixotism CD (EMEGO 202CD)15.50Recorded with a multitude of collaborators in Europe, Japan, Australia and the USA, Quixotism presents the fruit of two years of work in the form of a single, LP-length piece in five parts. Oren Ambarchi's work in recent years has evinced an increasing fascination with the possibilities of combining abstract sonic textures with rhythm and pulse, whether in his drumming with Keiji Haino, the subtly driving ride cymbals provided by drummer Joe Talia in their work together, or the motorik grooves of 2012's Sagittarian Domain (EMEGO 144CD/LP). Quixotism takes this aspect of Ambarchi's recent work to the next level: the entirety of this long-form work is built on a foundation of pulsing double-time electronic percussion provided by Thomas Brinkmann. Beginning as almost subliminal propulsion behind cavernous orchestral textures and John Tilbury's delicate piano interjections, the percussive elements (elaborated on by Ambarchi and Matt Chamberlain) slowly inch into the foreground of the piece before suddenly breaking out into a polyrhythmic shuffle around the halfway mark, being joined by master Japanese tabla player U-zhaan for the piece's final, beautiful, passages. The pulse acts as a thread leading the listener though a heterogeneous variety of acoustic spaces, from the concert hall in which the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra were recorded to the intimacy of Crys Cole's contact-mic textures. Ambarchi's guitar itself ranges over this wide variety of acoustic spaces, from airless, clipped tones to swirling, reverberated fog. Within the complex web, Ambarchi spins over the piece's steadily pulsing foundation, elements approach and recede, appear and reappear, in a non-linear fashion, even as the piece plots an overall course from the grey, almost Nono-esque reverberated space of its opening section to the crisp foreground presence of Jim O'Rourke's synth and Evyind Kang's strings in its final moments. Formally indebted to the side-long workouts of classic Cologne techno, the long-form works of composers such as Eliane Radigue, and the organic push and pull of improvised performance, Quixotism is constantly in motion, yet its transitions happen slowly and steadily, so that they are often nearly imperceptible, the diverse elements which make up the piece succeeding one another with the logic of a dream. Anyone who follows Ambarchi's work knows that it has many facets: explorations of the outer limits of rock with Keiji Haino, psychoacoustic interference and sizzling harmonics in his solo performances, delicate improvisations with Keith Rowe or John Tilbury. To all these projects, Ambarchi brings his particular sensibility, patiently allowing sounds to develop on their own terms without forsaking their intrinsic physical and emotional power. Similarly, although Quixotism is shaped by its many contributors, the resulting sound world is unmistakably Ambarchi's own. His most substantial solo release since 2012's Audience of One (TO 083CD/LP), Quixotism represents the summation of Ambarchi's work over the last few years while also pointing to the future. Oren Ambarchi (guitars and percussion); Thomas Brinkmann (computable drums with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem) (Parts 1-5); Matt Chamberlain (drums & electronics) (Parts 3 & 4); Crys Cole (contact mics & brushes) (Part 4); Eyvind Kang (bowed gender) (Part 1) & violas (Part 5); Jim O' Rourke (synths) (Parts 4 & 5); John Tilbury (piano) (Parts 1 & 2); U-zhaan (table) (Part 5); Ilan Volkov & the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra (Parts 1 & 3).

EL PARAISO RECORDS (DENMARK)

PAPIR: Stundum CD (EPR 007CD)16.502014 repress of the second album from Papir, originally released in 2011. Papir is a trio from Copenhagen, Denmark who have played together for years under various names while slowly, but surely, perfecting their unique brand of semi-improvisational psychedelic rock. Based around Christoffer Brøchmann's complex and powerful drumming, Papir creates instrumental journeys -- organic structures of sound that move forward with the hypnotic groove of Can or electric Miles Davis through euphoric peaks, thunderous riffs and beautiful cosmic dronescapes. Nicklas Sørensen's guitar playing displays his love for fuzzed-out psychedelic rock from the 1960s and 1970s but also has a highly melodic aspect that reveals his admiration for German heroes Michael Rother and Manuel Göttsching. Similarly Christian Becher Clausen's bass playing covers a wide palette of ideas and sounds -- sometimes using the instrument as a solid groove-maker and other times as a tool for creating spacy soundscapes and drones. As a unit the three members achieve what the great power trios of the 1960s did at their most fertile: the ability to combine each aspect of the band into a whole that surpasses the sum of its parts. This is music to lose oneself in -- music to swim in.

CAUSA SUI: Pewt'r Sessions 1-2 2CD (EPR 008CD)21.002014 repress of this release from 2012. Pewt'r Sessions 1-2 collects two limited vinyl-only Causa Sui albums, originally released in 2011. The two albums, released in April and August respectively, both feature American musician Ron Schneiderman and both sold out immediately after release. Schneiderman from American improv-rock collective Sunburned Hand of the Man first got together with Danish stoner/Kraut/jazz ensemble Causa Sui in December 2006 for a loose, improvised gig at the old cinema at Christiania -- Copenhagen's autonomous, and notorious, free commune. A live recording of this gig was released the following year, under the curious bandname Pewt'r jjjjj, and became widely admired among fans of free-form psychedelic rock for its updated version of late 1960s/early 1970s freak-out bands such as Blue Cheer, Guru Guru and Ash Ra Tempel. In the early summer of 2009 Schneiderman was back in Denmark, this time for a three-week stay as co-curator of the art-and-music event Festival of Endless Gratitude. During this period the group was united again for a few shows and a couple of recording sessions in Causa Sui's studio in Odense, which resulted in the Pewt'r Sessions albums. These records consist of loosely structured sun and beer-fueled jams that were later edited and mixed by Causa Sui guitar player and producer Jonas Munk. While all the psychedelic fury from the Christiania live recording is still very prevalent on these studio sessions, they also see the group channeling into new territories, such as pieces heavy on analog electronics and motoric grooves. Pewt'r Sessions 1 and 2 are albums that could only be recorded in an impulsive mode. Yet there is an alternative kind of structure taking place in almost every piece -- some intuitive, almost psychic connection, which moves the sounds from one place to another.

ELASTIC DREAMS (UK)

A SAGITTARIUN: Wish You Were There EP 12" (EDREAMS 010EP)14.00Continuing to operate on the very outer fringes of the techno and electronica genre, A Sagittariun returns with a new release on Elastic Dreams. Following on from 2013's acclaimed Dream Ritual album and the 2014 single The Jupiter Chronicles EP, the one born under the ninth sign offers up more cosmic techno and astral excursions on the Wish You Were There EP. From the searing techno of "Loopholes" to the heavy break and subaquatic melodies of "The Lathe of Heaven" to the wide-eyed and emotive closer of "Blake's Vision," this is another trio of versatile tracks.

EM RECORDS (JAPAN)

BANDON, DAO: Kon Kee Lang Kwai (Man on a Water Buffalo): Essential Dao Bandon LP (EM 1131LP)23.50LP version. This is the second release in the re-launch of EM Records' Thai music series. Paradise Bangkok, Soi 48 and EM have teamed up to deliver a series showcasing the extraordinary performances of some of Thailand's greatest musical legends. For reasons unknowable, certain places in certain eras become hotbeds of music, fertile in their growth and flowering of musical talent. Thailand in the 1970s was such a place, and Dao Bandon is one of the enduring greats of that era. Born in the farm country of the Isan region, Bandon came from a poor family and was a monk during his teens, two great influences which shaped him, with his farm roots grounding the earthy heart of his lyrics, and his years of monastic chanting lending a unique resonance to his singing. After an apprenticeship with some of the greats of Thai music, Dao Bandon began to enjoy success leading his own band. The songs here, released in the 1970s, showcase the infectiously joyful Bandon groove, his mellifluous voice, and his captivating melodic sense. His lyrics deal with sex, love, marijuana, and the struggles of the poor, but no matter what he sings about, a sense of good cheer is always evident. Featuring parallel translations of the lyrics, in-depth liner notes, rare photos, and of course, great music, Man on a Water Buffalo is yet another example of Thai excellence from EM Records. English & Japanese text with Thai, English, and Japanese lyrics.

ERASED TAPES (UK)

KIASMOS: Kiasmos CD (ERATP 062CD)15.50Ólafur Arnalds and Janus Rasmussen finally release their unique Nordic electronic sounds in album-size. After dropping several tracks and performing at select festivals throughout the years, Ólafur Arnalds and Janus Rasmussen dedicated the year 2014 to explore the area in-between Ólafur's more acoustic, piano-based solo work and Janus' synth-heavy electro-pop, with their collaborative electronic project Kiasmos. By focusing solely on their self-titled debut album, Ólafur and Janus have been able to combine and further develop their unique sound aesthetics to complete an album driven by their mutual love for electronic music. Made in Ólafur's newly-built studio in Reykjavik, Iceland, a majority of the album was recorded using acoustic instruments next to a variety of synthesizers, drum machines and tape delays. It features a live drummer, string quartet and Ólafur performing on the grand piano, producing an ambient, textured sound which makes it a perfect home listen and equally danceable record. If you listen closely, you can spot them recording the thumb piano, finger-snapping, and even the sound of the metal grinder of a lighter used to replace the usual electronic hi-hat sounds, giving the album a far more intimate and unique atmosphere. Long-time Erased Tapes graphics collaborator Torsten Posselt at Feld Studios in Berlin created the cover artwork. Feld Studios was a natural choice for Kiasmos, seeing how he also designed the cover for their Thrown EP. Kiasmos is made up of Icelandic BAFTA-winning composer Ólafur Arnalds, known for his unique blend of minimal piano and string compositions with electronic sounds, and Janus Rasmussen from the Faroe Islands, known as the mastermind of the electro-pop outfit Bloodgroup. Based in Reykjavik, Arnalds used to work as a sound engineer, often for Rasmussen's other projects, where the two musicians discovered their common love for minimal, experimental music. They eventually became best friends, often hanging out in their studio, exploring electronic sounds.

BASTINOV: Pentagon 12" (ETB 019EP)14.00Bastinov (aka Diego Gennaro) is a Venice-based young producer and DJ. Pentagon is a path into techno and in its shades, starting from punching and rolling sounds and ending up with the addition of some melodic parts. Beyond the original mixes, the EP is enriched with remixes from label boss Luca Agnelli and newcomer talents Toms:due. "Pentagon" is composed with an alternated hypnotic synth melody and a vibrant groove which will bring you into your deepest mental journey. "Theorem" was created with an amazing and pleasant chord, a devastating groove and a big, punchin' kick.

VA: Glitterbeat: Dubs & Versions I CD (GB 018CD)17.00"It can't be much of a surprise that Glitterbeat would eventually assemble a collection of dubs and versions of songs by their artists. Our very first release in the spring of 2013 was a 500-piece limited edition 12" where two tracks from the Malian Afro-rock newcomer Ben Zabo were given an inspired dub treatment by legendary Berlin producer Mark Ernestus. Those two tracks are included here as well as eight other reinterpretations from our growing catalog. Having had the privilege of working with each of the Malian artists remixed for this album we can safely say that this project will not seem as strange to them as one might assume. In contemporary Malian music, reggae plays a fundamental role and nearly every electric-based band we have encountered in Bamako and beyond incorporates at least some reggae elements into their sound. Also the rapid, ubiquitous rise of hip-hop in Mali has brought samples, remixes and programming into the direct orbit of the country's urban musicians. And in the dusty, open lots of Bamako's sprawling neighborhoods, the music that one most frequently encounters being performed is Balani, a sort of Malian variant of dancehall, where laptop electronic beats and declamatory 'toasting' are combined with samples of balafons and other traditional instruments. Balani is by definition a remix-generated music. Bringing together the different mixers with the songs of the original artists was an exciting process. Our choices of who to invite rose intuitively out of our record collections and our personal networks and almost every mixer that we approached thankfully accepted the invitation. Mark Ernestus was asked to fashion our original 12" not only because of our deep love for his work with the abstract dub duo Rhythm & Sound but also because of his albums in collaboration with Jeri Jeri, the Senegalese sabar group. Dubmaster Dennis Bovell's work with Linton Kwesi Johnson, The Pop Group and Orange Juice has been a big part of our personal soundtracks for more than 30 years. We were introduced to the South African Nozinja via his infectious Shangaan Electro productions. Honest Jon's released an excellent remix album (Shangaan Shake) of his tracks and we thought it fitting that he join our remix dialogue. We stumbled upon the British-Ghanaian performance, visual and musical artist Larry Achiampong's self-released LP More Mogya and were excited by its mash-up of palm wine and high life samples with hip-hop beats. We have been fans of Mark Stewart all the way back to his days in the seminal post-punk band The Pop Group, but it was his recent dub album Exorcism of Envy that really caught our collective ear. The intricate Afro-techno of "Harmonius Thelonius" is by definition a sort of West African music remix project, and he seemed a perfect choice to invite. Rounding off the list of mixers is Dirk Dresselhaus aka Schneider TM, whose wide-open musical obsessions have embraced indie-rock, analog electronics, improvisation and field recordings. With the finished master of this album right now echoing from our speakers we are already thinking about Glitterbeat: Dubs & Versions Volume II. Can't wait." --Chris Eckman & Peter Weber, Glitterbeat Records

GOLF CHANNEL RECORDINGS

MIND FAIR: Mind Fair CD (CHANNEL 029CD)15.00Mind Fair are Dean Meredith (Chicken Lips, Goat Dance) and Ben Shenton. Over the last few years they have had a slew of 12"s out on Golf Channel, International Feel and their own imprint, Rogue Cat Sounds, but are only now dropping this, their long-awaited debut LP. It is a bluesy folk-funk swamp techno barnyard stomp of an album. It takes in influences from Krautrock to English psych through to classic Detroit techno, Chicago house and the (Italo) disco that inspired it. It somehow unifies these diverse threads and drags them into 2014 via a rave in the countryside. We go dancing on a hay bale at 10am in the sunshine in a pair of dungarees before collapsing on a friend's sofa and skinning up amidst friends jamming with acoustic guitars and bongos. Through it all marches the distinctive sounds that are Dean and Ben's hallmarks: chugging analog bass and deeply funky drums. All this is set to a loose concept of a night out at the quintessential English traveling fair manned by psychedelic freaks -- the fair of the mind. The vocal talents of Clover Ray feature, alongside other regular contributors Karl "Akuko" Miller (percussion & vocals), Tim Silver (ukelele!), Sadie Shenton Jones (vocals) and James Flanagan (vocals). Sumptuous artwork comes from Thomas Bullock aka Tom Of England of Rub N Tug/Map Of Africa fame.

GOMMA RECORDS (GERMANY)

MUNK: Chanson 3000 CD (GOMMA 200CD)15.50Munk is the project of Gomma label-founder Mathias Modica ("Germany's most interesting electronic music label" --NME). Munk is best-known for his collaborations with Rebolledo from Pachanga Boys (Surf Smurf), James Murphy's LCD Soundsystem (Kick Out the Chairs), Asia Argento (Live Fast Die Old) and club-hits like "Down in L.A." and "La Musica." He co-produced the albums of Gomma bands WhoMadeWho and Moullinex. There is already a big buzz around Munk right now: The pre-single "Southern Moon" went to the top of the Beatport house charts. DJs such as Todd Terje, Shit Robot, Tensnake and Disclosure are playing it. Also "Happiness Juice" (and its superb video) is all over the blogs right now. Munk's latest remix of Lana Del Rey's "West Coast" went to No.1 on The Hype Machine after its release in June 2014 and is one of the most blogged remixes of this summer. The new album Chanson 3000 is the fourth Munk album. It was recorded in Berlin, where Mathias and his new vocalists live. As usual, Mathias' music doesn't fit into any categories. It's a mixture of '90s electronica and house with new wave, '70s jazz-funk, indie-disco and his love for songwriters like Burt Bacharach, Quincy Jones, and Trevor Horn. Mathias is a classically-trained musician. His dad (a composer of contemporary classical music) taught him to play instruments since the age of five. That's why Modica's way of producing is so different: he mixes "real" instruments (he plays piano, synths, bass, saxophone, guitars, drums) and new digital techniques. He also has this special ability to write melancholic melodies and harmonic structures that are unusual to electronic music. That's probably why so many names have been invented to describe the Munk sound: outsider house, digital soul, deep disco -- but maybe you can put it the way a German writer did: Munk sounds like you put Metronomy, Disclosure and Nicolas Jaar in a mixer and added some great soul voices. The album was mixed and mastered by Rob Rox (Banks) and Mark Ralph (Daniel Avery, Franz Ferdinand).

HOSPITAL PRODUCTIONS

ALBERICH: NATO-Uniformen 2LP (HOS 421LP)27.50This gatefold double LP set is a redacted version of Alberich's indomitable, spirit-crushing opus, NATO-Uniformen, cut from 30 tracks in the original eight-cassette box (limited to 50 copies) to 19 tracks on this version, edited in 2014 for the Trans Industrial Assembly in NYC. Originally deployed in 2010, its bombed-out luster has become a firm favorite of everyone from Blackest Ever Black's Kiran Sande to Endangered Species' Vereker. Between the bludgeoned doom techno of "Skysweeper," the shell-strewn darkwave scenes of "Man Is Ready" and the Carpenter-esque adrenalizer, "Immortality Is No Consolation for Death," Alberich finds a very specific line through heavy electronics, synth zones, and dread techno, and holds it to the last with a shell-shocked, eviscerated aesthetic most unlike any other. Fully remastered and cut at Alchemy.

IMPORTANT RECORDS

ROGERS & MARY BYRNE, MARK: I Line My Days Along Your Weight CD (IMPREC 408CD)14.00Brooklyn duo Mark Rogers and Mary Byrne recorded their debut, I Line My Days Along Your Weight, as a true duet: facing each other inches apart, intent upon listening. They wove together archaic instruments -- baritone acoustic, tricone resonator, golden-era flattop, space-age lap steel, upright piano, and hundred-year-old mandolin -- into a new and vibrant third voice. All the songs were recorded live to two-inch analog tape, the studio equivalent of tightrope-walking without a net. Mark and Mary later added minimal touches of lap steel, piano, and electric guitar, but essentially what you hear is what they performed together, start to finish. With Mark's deeply expressive, contextual fingerstyle and Mary's emphatic, unaffected singing, this striking debut invites listeners into a space most intimate, and most human. Mark and Mary each grew up on opposite sides of Central Pennsylvania's Susquehanna River, but their paths did not cross until years later in the explosively creative East Atlanta music scene. From there, the two moved to Brooklyn, where they married, and where Mary earned her MFA in writing from Brooklyn College and Mark quickly became an in-demand stage and session player and music instructor. Their collaboration began in earnest in the days after Hurricane Sandy hit New York in November 2012; with the city at a standstill, the two sketched many of the songs now on I Line My Days Along Your Weight. Before this, Mark played with Brooklyn indie-folk band The Loom, with whom he toured and performed as part of Brooklyn Academy of Music's "Next Wave" series and at Pop Montreal and CMJ. He was also multi-instrumentalist and songwriter with Atlanta's renowned alt-Americana quartet, Myssouri, whose War/Love Blues was selected by Pitchfork as a top album. Mary was lead singer, songwriter, and guitarist for Atlanta trio Hot Young Priest, which toured nationwide; their Fiendish Freaky Love (Two Sheds Music) garnered critics' praise in Magnet, Amplifier, The Big Takeover, Time Out New York, and NPR's "All Songs Considered."

INTERNATIONAL FEEL (URUGUAY)

HOOD, JOEL: Gone 12" (IFEEL 032EP)14.00Joel Hood transports you straight out of a cold working town and drops you into a hazy world of intercontinental sonic voyaging, taking in fragments of family holidays and adult travel adventures cut and pasted into instrumentals that evoke DJ Shadow, Twin Peaks and The Avalanches, with Hood's voice weaving between it all. Already profiled by The Guardian and Music Week, plus picking up support from Rob Da Bank and BBC6 Music, his debut EP for International Feel features four tracks of psychedelic fusion carrying hints of '80s nostalgia amidst hedonistic futurism.

IT'S (GERMANY)

RVDS: Space EP 12" (ITS 012EP)14.00RVDS is back on earth with his Space EP, which starts with three rhythm tracks -- a tribute to the Roland machines 808, 606, 727. The first track is an electro hymn, and the second and third tracks are fine rhythm tools that force you to dance on the moon. The last track is a great ambient piece, similar to RVDS' work with Lawrence and Christian Naujoks on their project Sky Walking. Each sleeve comes with a unique handmade drawing by RVDS himself. Art and sound in space. Available only on vinyl.

MOBY GRAPE: Live at Stony Brook University, NY, October 22nd 1968 LP (KH 9022LP)23.00LP version, pressed on 180 gram vinyl. October 22nd, 1968 found Moby Grape supporting on a bill with Procol Harum and The Churls in the gym at Stony Brook University, New York. They had recently become a quartet following the departure of troubled singer/guitarist Skip Spence, and this superb set captures them in transition from their psychedelic ballroom days to a mellower, country-based sound. It's presented here with background notes and rare images.

KEYSOUND RECORDINGS (UK)

DUSK + BLACKDOWN: Back 2 Go FWD>> EP 2x12" (LDN 049EP)21.00Dusk + Blackdown present five tracks for Keysound Recordings -- the dark, aquatic 8-bar rollage of "Timeless," two driving percussive "Back 2 Go FWD" versions, the Detroit/broken "Peng One Two," and a beatless "Epic Jam." All written at 130 bpm but differing widely in mood and impact, they aim at the tricky paradox of diversity but interconnectedness. Three more tracks make up the doublepack: Blackdown remixes Epoch's "Steppenwolf," while Horsepower and Facta remix two Dusk + Blackdown tracks.

KITSUNE (FRANCE)

VA: Kitsuné Maison Compilation 16: The Sweet Sixteen Issue 2LP (KITSUNE 058LP)25.50Parisian music label Kitsuné is back with its annual emblematic compilation. Breaking today some of the exciting artists who will matter most tomorrow, Kitsuné's flagship compilation is back for another round. Showcasing, as always, a complete assortment of the movers and shakers currently shaping up music's future, Kitsuné Maison 16 hits the streets with fresh new artwork composed of drawings by 23 of the most exciting new illustrators scouted by the label. Sweet Sixteen doesn't nod at Ken Loach's movie of the same name, although the determination of its main character only reflects too well the Franco-Japanese fox's irrepressible urge to develop as an essential brand. Nearer the mark, a "sweet sixteen" is the coming-of-age party celebrating a girl's 16th birthday, and indeed for Kitsuné's co-founder Gildas Loaec, this new volume is resolutely about adolescence. Featuring exclusive tracks by young electro prodigy Fakear and Kitsuné homies Logo, as well as soon-to-be classics by the likes of Jaws, new Puerto Rican sensation Buscalbulla, dance-punk duo Sego, Danish beauty Kwamie Liv, and other artists, including: Frances, Cesare, We Are Shining, Danglo, Margot, Croquet Club, Citizens!, Tobtok, Davidian, Eli & Fur, Nimmo And The Gauntletts, Christian Rich, and Angela McCluskey.

KLIK RECORDS (GREECE)

12 TONES: Oneiro Ep 12" (KL 013EP)12.5012 Tones' first-ever vinyl release on Klik Records can be described as a dream crafted magically by the duo that represents the new era in the Greek electronic music scene. Based in the western part of the country, their sound is a unique blend of European tech house with the characteristic Mediterranean touch. Pure deepness. Supported by some of the most respected DJs in the world, including Noir, M.A.N.D.Y., Siopis, Tiger Stripes, Tiefschwarz, and more.

KRANKY

GROUPER: Ruins CD (KRANK 189CD)13.00"'Ruins was made in Aljezur, Portugal in 2011 on a residency set up by Galeria Ze dos Bois. I recorded everything there except the last song, which I did at mother's house in 2004. I'm still surprised by what I wound up with. It was the first time I'd sat still for a few years; processed a lot of political anger and emotional garbage. Recorded pretty simply, with a portable 4-track, Sony stereo mic and an upright piano. When I wasn't recording songs I was hiking several miles to the beach. The path wound through the ruins of several old estates and a small village. The album is a document. A nod to that daily walk. Failed structures. Living in the remains of love. I left the songs the way they came (microwave beep from when power went out after a storm); I hope that the album bears some resemblance to the place that I was in.' -- Liz Harris"

GROUPER: Ruins LP (KRANK 189LP)14.00LP version. "'Ruins was made in Aljezur, Portugal in 2011 on a residency set up by Galeria Ze dos Bois. I recorded everything there except the last song, which I did at mother's house in 2004. I'm still surprised by what I wound up with. It was the first time I'd sat still for a few years; processed a lot of political anger and emotional garbage. Recorded pretty simply, with a portable 4-track, Sony stereo mic and an upright piano. When I wasn't recording songs I was hiking several miles to the beach. The path wound through the ruins of several old estates and a small village. The album is a document. A nod to that daily walk. Failed structures. Living in the remains of love. I left the songs the way they came (microwave beep from when power went out after a storm); I hope that the album bears some resemblance to the place that I was in.' -- Liz Harris"

LEHULT (GERMANY)

LUCKY CHARMZ: Follow Me to Flottbek Falls 12" (LHLT 001EP)14.00Follow Me to Flottbek Falls by Lucky Charmz is released on the Lehult label. These four cuts are organic, spontaneous, and most of all, fun. It's house music to dance to, dry as fuck, warm and cozy. "Corneria" is a splash of funk, body-moving, dancefloor-embracing, with a bass line shot straight from the hip. "Tonic" is bittersweet, as tonic is -- zesty, with limey stabs that come out of nowhere. "Flupen" is a jazzy cut that goes easy on the ears, and "560 sl" encompasses the previous three and takes the whole EP on the road into a late, northern sunset.

LIGHT IN THE ATTIC

STONE, SLY: I'm Just Like You: Sly's Stone Flower 1969-70 CD (LITA 121CD)15.00"In 1970, The Family Stone were at the peak of their popularity, but the maestro Sly Stone had already moved his head to a completely different space. The first evidence of Sly's musical about-turn was revealed by the small catalog of his new label, Stone Flower: a pioneering, peculiar, minimal electro-funk sound that unfolded over just four seven-inch singles. Stone Flower's releases were credited to their individual artists, but each had Sly's design and musicianship stamped into the grooves--and the words 'Written by Sylvester Stewart/Produced and arranged by Sly Stone' on the sticker. Set up by Stone's manager David Kapralik with distribution by Atlantic Records, Stone Flower was, predictably, a family affair: the first release was by Little Sister, fronted by Stone's little sister Vaetta Stewart. It was short lived too--the imprint folded in 1971--but its influence was longer lasting. The sound Stone formulated while working on Stone Flower's output would shape the next phase in his own career as a recording artist: it was here he began experimenting with the brand new Maestro Rhythm King drum machine. In conjunction with languid, effected organ and guitar sounds and a distinctly lo-fi soundscape, Sly's productions for Stone Flower would inform the basis of his masterwork There's A Riot Goin' On. This long overdue compilation of Sly's Stone Flower era gathers each side of the five 45s plus ten previously unissued cuts from the label archives, all newly remastered from the original tapes. In these grooves you'll find the missing link between the rocky, soulful Sly Stone of Stand! and the dark, drum machine-punctuated, overdubbed sound of There's A Riot Going On. I'm Just Like You: Sly's Stone Flower 1969-70 opens up the mysteries of an obscure but monumental phase in Stone's career."

LUCKY DOG (UK)

TINDERSTICKS: Ypres CD (LUCKY 017CD)15.50In early 2011, Tindersticks were commissioned by the In Flanders Fields World War One Museum in Ypres, Belgium to create the soundscapes for the new permanent exhibition commemorating the centenary of the Great War and beyond. Tindersticks' response was to write, record and produce a continuous, orchestral score to accompany the visitor on their emotional journey through the unique story of Ypres in the Great War. The score evolves through the different, distinctive spaces and sections of the museum, punctuated with private contemplative spaces where the music was allowed to be more poetic. Made from a series of interlocking orchestral loops, the music flows seamlessly all day, everyday, without beginning, middle or end. The aim, for Stuart Staples, was for the soundtrack to "become the sound of air within the museum." Ypres was the epicenter of the Western Front in The Great War and was virtually destroyed by the conflict. It has since, only relatively recently, been rebuilt to its original plans. The museum is housed in the rebuilt cloth hall that stands in the center of the town and was once the hub of the town's industry. Hundreds of thousands died in Ypres and the surrounding area, with allied cemeteries and graves scattered everywhere. In keeping with the perspective of the new museum, Staples felt it crucial to "bring the essence of the experience to a personal level. To somehow loosen it away from the images we have all become accustomed to." Inspiration for the work was found in the quiet, dignified German memorial garden of Vladslo and Kathe Kollwitz' famous "Grieving Parents" statue that resides there. Stuart Staples and Dan McKinna worked closely to compose the score and felt the museum building resonated with a key of F. The starting point for the music became a musical cluster of E flat, F and F sharp. The recording was presided over by long-time collaborator and orchestra leader Lucy Wilkins. The orchestral recordings were made at the Church in Crouch End, London and were then taken back to Le Chien Chanceux studio in France to prepare for the installation. In collaboration with London Sound designers "Sound Intermedia," a bank holiday weekend in May 2012 was spent meticulously building the soundscape for every individual space. The In Flanders Field Museum re-opened its doors with Tindersticks' soundtrack on June 11, 2012. Now Tindersticks are releasing the recording of the soundtrack via Lucky Dog Recordings.

BLACK CRACKER: Poster Boy CD (MAX 024CD)20.00He is a multi-colored shades artist. He is poetry, he is stoic. He interfaces the differences without self-denying. He is a dancer. He is a video-artist. He is an entertainer. He was a girl. Stoic as fuck, with a baby face and a set of blue-collar shoulders, Ellison Renee Glenn aka Black Cracker rocks a swag aesthetic that lies somewhere between Dipset and Blackbox. Currently living between Berlin and Lausanne, but based professionally out of NYC, he works as a producer/MC/writer and has collaborated with the likes of CocoRosie, Creep, Bunny Rabbit and Grand Pianoramax, among others. Black Cracker is known as an unconventional yet highly-appreciated artist who knows how to translate studio time into energetic stage performances -- one of the reasons why artists like Slick Rick, Grimes, Trust, and many others have enjoyed sharing the stage with him. His work has recently been covered in The New York Times and Vice magazine, on Converse Rubber Tracks, in the Adidas store magazine, as well as on CNN. Includes remixes from Acid Washed, Ashworth, and Wild Katz.

HAMID: Dolce Vita EP 12" (MINI 035EP)14.00For his second release on Minibar, Hamid presents the Dolce Vita EP. The vinyl features two minimal, looping and driving tracks, faithful to his smooth approach of house music. The deep aspect of the track "Dolce Vita" combined with the dynamism of "Consultation" brings you a complete package, perfect for the dancefloor.

MINUS (CANADA)

OSUNA, PACO: Long Play CD (MINUSMAX 029CD)15.50After a three-year production hiatus, Barcelona's techno kingpin Paco Osuna returns with not only a new release for Richie Hawtin's M_nus label, but also his debut LP, entitled Long Play -- eight precision tracks, purposely built for the dancefloor in his inimitable style. Long Play is a meeting-point of Paco Osuna's past and his future. The product of nearly 20 years behind the decks, from early residencies at Amnesia in the late '90s, to an integral role in Hawtin's current ENTER. events at Space and a push forward for techno, house, minimal, and tech- house, Long Play's sleek and exuberant tracks are thread together by Osuna's always-addictive bass lines. "The bass line is my obsession," he says -- the key ingredient to making picture-perfect techno and playing incredible, unflaggingly energetic DJ sets.

MOBILEE (GERMANY)

RE.YOU: Watching You 12" (MOBILEE 138EP)12.50Re.You returns to Mobilee with three tracks certain to satiate fans of the label's techno leanings. Watching You finds Re.You in familiarly fine form, particularly pairing with South African poet Lazarusman on the track, "Vivid." Another example of the open-door policy that house music thrives on.

MOODMUSIC (GERMANY)

SASSE: Soul Sounds 12" (MOOD 031EP)12.00Sasse's "Soul Sounds" in its "Freestyle Man Original Dope Mix" got heavy play by Ricardo Villalobos, Steve Bug, and the Pokerflat massive and was even featured on the Sony Playstation 2 game Decks & EFX! Now remastered and re-cut at Dubplates & Mastering for the ultimate sound experience, this one will fly away. The limited pressing never really got the chance it deserved, so Moodmusic are releasing this mutha again with a remix from darlings of the dirty bizniz, Dirt Crew aka James Flavour and Break 3000.

MOTE EVOLVER (UK)

KAMIKAZE SPACE PROGRAMME: Concrete Musique 12" (MOTE 040EP)12.50Luke Slater's Mote-Evolver reaches the big 4-0 with the help of Chris Jarman, the commanding officer behind the Kamikaze Space Programme. Looking to redefine the concept of uncompromising from bass culture's traditional Bristol HQ, Concrete Musique is four tracks of loud, hard-nosed, techno-taunting speaker pressure. Both "The Bailiff" and "Network Rail" power off box-y kick drums: such is their statement of intimidation. "Radio" lays down body-popping lino before the techno undertone turns it into a bed of nails, while "Death to the Valley" can be found sweeping grime and trap before it.

MULE MUSIQ (GERMANY)

MULLAERT AND EITAN REITER, SEBASTIAN: Reflections of Nothingness CD (MUSIQ 045CD)17.00"Enter the Spiral" -- the title of the opening track by the first collaborative work between Sebastian Mullaert and Eitan Reiter is not just a random name. It is a title which anticipates what can happen if you let yourself go alongside their nine epic musical trips. They all emerged out of a free-flowing improvised communication between the DJs and producers from Sweden and Israel. They both first deeply met at a festival in Tulum, Mexico where they played together at the end of the Mayan calendar. During their Yucatán days, they connected intensely and subsequently stayed in touch. Finally Eitan proposed the idea to visit Sebastian in his dropout studio in the Swedish woods in the north of Malmö. Sebastian instantly said yes, and added, without knowing, another chapter to a vibrant artistic year, in which he started to focus on his solo work and took a hiatus from his famed project Minilogue, after playing, producing, and performing with his close friend Marcus Henriksson for more than 16 years. Warmly welcomed in a little Swedish village right at the entrance of a big National Park, Eitan, who produces and releases genre-crossing electronic and electro-acoustic music solo or in projects such as Loud since the mid-noughties, found himself right in the center of Sebastian's family. Absorbed by the sense of oneness in their daily existence, they started to communicate in the studio, aimlessly building an intersection between the outer and the inner world. It turned out to be a celestial, dynamic voyage of unconscious emotions, producing a unique journey in sound. They drift on ambient territories, they let their heartbeats out via knocking techno beats, go deeply into moments of trance and drop some sparkling acid arpeggios while dipping into all sorts of electronic musical expressions. You cannot put their collaboration into one stylistic corner -- you can only say that all their music distributes the feeling of an unvarnished musical trip. The album was largely made on a Roland TB303, TR808, SH101 and Juno 60, but there is also Sebastian's Fender Rhodes audible on almost every track. In addition they used strange vocal samples, Eitan sings, cymbals howl, an electronic children's book has been used as an instrument, and there are also tons of external effects. With a free-spirited teamwork the sonority can absorb the listener deeply -- just like Eitan and Sebastian were absorbed by their days in nature.

FRIEDMAN & DANIEL DODD-ELLIS, BURNT: Cease to Matter CD (NON 038CD)15.50The impact of these eleven sound poems, or poetry tracks, derives less from intentional meaning and symbolism than from fortuitous coincidences, cut-ups, and flashes of inspiration in the course of handling the audio material. Rather than a composed narrative, the tracks reflect the inner reality of the authors Burnt Friedman and Daniel Dodd-Ellis. Moods and impressions from B. Friedman's Sub-Saharan concert tour in 2013 as well as fragments of memories of an imaginary future fuse together in the music and text of all eleven tracks. These responses to real-life "kpafuca" ("things falling apart") -- conditions in African metropolises -- collapse into grooves and phrases reminiscent of Chris Marker's sci-fi apocalypticism (La Jette, Sans Soleil). This polyphony of non-places also includes the spirit of sound explorers such as the musical-ethnological practitioners Hartmut Geerken and Roman Bunka (Embryo), whose visions and musical activities refuse to succumb to reductionist and essentialist staging. In Cease to Matter, Friedman intuitively pits the liberating power of noise, of über-mensch-maschinen music, against those cultural landscapes repeatedly automatically inscribed into music. Odd beats and random technical defects -- that is to say, disobedience -- are pitted against the normative interpretational supremacy of musical world maps. The voice of Daniel Dodd-Ellis, a Berlin-based performer and vocalist from Texas, was first heard on Burnt Friedman's 2007 album First Night Forever. The lyrics stem from both artists and were cut-up and re-assembled several times over by Friedman during production in 2013 and 2014. The line "Skies are blue inside of you" comes from Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World, which appeared in 1932. Tracks 04 and 09 ("Cease to Matter") contain a piano sample edit based on a composition by Georges Ivanovich Gurdjieff (1872-1949).

OMEGA RECORDS (NETHERLANDS)

WOORDEN: Woorden LP (OMEGA 333023LP)21.00"Massively unlikely out-of-nowhere exact repro reissue of this insane underground LP, still the most amazing slice of OTT freak to come out of the Netherlands in the late 1960s: a project masterminded by four far-out poets -- Simon Vinkenoog, Bob Lens, Hans Wesseling and Nona -- Woorden's closest companion might be Walter Wegmuller and the Cosmic Courier's majestic Tarot set, with diversions into concrete tape work, solo harmonica jams, heavy psych, freak jazz, acid folk and total musical non that touch on aspects of Patrick Conrad, Allan Kaprow, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Popol Vuh and an unholy Chie Mukai/Masayoshi Urabe junk/reeds/drone ritual. Long one of the rarest and whispered about underground Euro masterpieces, Woorden sees the poets chant, flip, sing in heavy F/X reverb heavens and work oracular magic ala Starmaiden herself while the music (courtesy of heads who also played on Group 1850's legendary Agemo's Trip To Mother Earth) moves from radical free jazz through laminal voice constructs that confuse automating surrealism and screwed tape/sound works based around 'universal orgasms' and the kind of percussion/vocal freak that is somewhere upwind of Junko and Yoko Ono. The harmonica and drums jams come over like a Cromagnon Kaoru Abe w/almost Sergius Golowin levels of eye-lolling universal worship. Hard to think of an album that is so completely Nurse With Wound list than this amazing long-lost classic and this handy, though ultra limited, reissue saves you selling your car to get a hold of a copy. Profoundly out, massively damaged, classic 60s-utopian art/theatre/noise/psych from a buncha heads with an umbilical to another galaxy altogether." -- David Keenan; on purple vinyl with insert.

OPTICAL SUBSTANCE PRODUCTIONS (NORWAY)

OPTICAL SUBSTANCE: Adaptation CD (OSP 001CD)17.002010 release. Optical Substance is the project of the musician and producer Kjetil Husebø, a project in which he combines elements from both jazz, electronica, ambient and pop. On the new album entitled Adaptation, he has consciously sought a balance between an acoustic and an electronic sound. In the compositions, we find an assembly of eclectic musical expressions that convey intense emotion both in a melodic, calm, meditative and thoughtful manner. The music has an organic character and the production is subtle. The compositions that appear on Adaptation are the result of extensive work with various musicians who focus particularly on improvisation. The live-sampling of these musicians has been an important basis for the creative process, resulting in Adaptation. Thus, the album contains numerous live samplings that have shaped much of the music here. The following musicians have all contributed to the album: Kjetil Husebø (synth, programming, piano, sampling and more), Steinar Vaernes (trumpet), Terje Evensen (drums), Alex Gunia (guitar), Sigrun Eng (cello), Karolin Broosch (violin), Bjoern Charles Dreyer (guitar), Alex Kozmidi (guitar), and Dmitry Suslov (sax). The album was mixed by Terje Evensen in stereo and was mastered by Chris Sansom at Propeller Mastering.

HUSEBO, KJETIL: Contradictions CD (OSP 002CD)17.002012 release. When Kjetil Husebø released his album Adaptation in 2010, the Norwegian newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv made use of a metaphor linked to the natural world, as his music was described as operating within the realm of jazz and electronica in the same manner as powdery snow covers a steep mountain, thus accentuating its subtle and funky characteristics. With Contradictions, Kjetil presents a musical universe that comprises other musical qualities than before. Being the artistic core of Optical Substance, Kjetil has previously released two albums. Contradictions constitutes the first album that is entirely Kjetil's work. This album features Kjetil in musical improvisation on a magnificent Steinway grand piano recorded live at Ibsenhuset/Audiopol Studio with Audun Kleive as sound technician. It was mixed and mastered by Reidar Skaar. The music on this release combines melodic, lyric, and pensive passages with a refined, abstract, dark and free-flowing atmosphere. As a musician, Kjetil gathers inspiration from a muster of sources such as jazz, classical music, folk music, ambient, contemporary music and pop/rock. As a pianist, such masterful musicians as Bugge Wesseltoft, Jon Balke, Marcin Wasilewski and Django Bates, among others, have influenced him. Kjetil Husebø: Steinway D Grand Piano and live electronics/sampling.

OVUM

WINK, JOSH: Talking to You 12" (OVM 248EP)14.00Any news of an impending Josh Wink release is usually met with a familiar mix of excitement and trepidation. When the bar is perpetually raised to such lofty heights, what can one man do to keep such momentum going? The answer, naturally, is to slam the listener with the kinetic intensity of a full-on jackhammer acid assault, and that's exactly what "I'm Talking to You" does. A swelling TB 303 motif swims around a vocal snippet, distorted and chopped to mind-bending effect. The release also features a (subjectively) more subdued "Groove" mix, and a signature "TalkApella" tool for DJ sets.

PAMPA (GERMANY)

DJ KOZE: Reincarnations Part 2 CD (PAMPA 010CD)15.50Following Reincarnations: The Remix Chapter 2001-2009 and Music Is Okay (2000), comes the third major exhibition of DJ Koze's work as a remix virtuoso: Reincarnations Part 2. Alongside his acclaimed solo albums, it is primarily through his remixes that DJ Koze, like no other producer of electronic music, sets new standards again and again. His musical and storytelling skills always seem to shine a little brighter when he lets all his love and passion flow into the music of other artists. There are many songs where people first recall the DJ Koze version -- remixes to remember. For Reincarnations Part 2, DJ Koze aka Swahimi, der Unerleuchtete, (Swahimi, the Unenlightened), collected 12 of his musical rebirths in an old wicker basket, where otherwise a small cat can be found sleeping. Once more, DJ Koze refines and varies his colors and shapes, styles and materials. He prefers to reach a crescendo on the dancefloor in his own special way -- often the loud becomes the quiet, the heavy stands in contrast with the gentle. Koze's remix of Moderat's "Bad Kingdom" makes a hymn from a hit. His reworking of the two Herbert tracks "It's Only" (Resident Advisor Poll 2013 - Track of the Year #1) and "You Saw It All" feel like abstract paintings, yet function simultaneously as great pop music. And his wonderful arrangements for Caribou, Who Made Who, Ada, Gonzales, Soap & Skin, and finally, as a crowning glory, Apparat's "Blackwater," have all long since become classics. In the mountains, they say, the direct route always leads from summit to summit. An experienced mountaineer, DJ Koze also leads us along winding paths, up through shady valleys and high over the clouds. Reincarnations Part 2 is that kind of journey, rambling and floating, a grand illumination. Enlightened. Other artists include: Super Flu, Zwanie Jonson, Mount Kimbie, and The Big Crunch Theorie.

VA: Permanent Vacation 3 2CD (PERMVAC 133CD)20.00Seven years after the release of the last Permanent Vacation compilation, the label dared to compile number three. They collected tracks that became good friends along the road and echoed in their hearts and ears for a long time. So it felt about right to put them on two sweaty compact discs. Twenty-four tracks that reach from the desert to the jungle and which put a spell on the label from the first time they heard them. Artists include: Commix, Instra:Mental, Pascal Schäfer, The Golden Filter, John Talabot, Chateau Marmont, Beautiful Swimmers, Panther Modern, DrumTalk, Heatsick, Young Marco, RA-X, Invisible Conga People, Popnoname, The Field, Kettel, Sergej Auto, Woolfy, Project Sandro, Arsenal, Joakim, Scott Fraser, Timothy J Fairplay, Brandi Ifgray, Secret Circuit, Daniel Wang, Enchante, Bot'Ox Meets Showgirls, JR Season, A Sagittariun, Rompante, Recondite, and Charles Webster.

PRE-CERT HOME ENTERTAINMENT (UK)

NEOTANTRIK: Omnichrom LP (VHSX 011LP)20.00Once again mining a rich source of archival material, tape works and improvised recordings, Andy Votel's Neotantrik tap deep into the subconscious with a highly-visual trip into the furthest reaches of psychedelic ambience. Following on from Blue Amiga (VHSX 010LP) that came and went in a flash, Omnichrom is a more brooding, studied affair. Unfurling from a delicate modular opening sequence, the A-side flows into a hallucinogenic fever-dream fleshed out with barely-there analog malfunctions and strings that suddenly throw you into a cacophony of noise in a proper creeped-out, tense fashion. The flipside carries on from this point -- pushing you deeper into a Badalamenti-esque soundworld replete with unnerving found sounds and mechanical percussion swung in and out of one of the trippiest Kosmische sessions we've heard in a while. Cut at Dubplates & Mastering in an edition of 500 copies.

PUSHMASTER DISCS (ITALY)

TRANI, MATTIA: Over the Future (The Detroit Remixes) 12" (PM 009EP)15.50This time Pushmaster Discs and Mattia Trani meet the beginning of techno music -- Detroit city! Three names, three legends: Gerald Mitchell, the musician, keyboardist of Galaxy 2 Galaxy (UR), founder of the Jaguar project called Los Hermanos. Claude Young, the true pioneer of the dark-rave sound of Detroit. Orlando Voorn, the story of '90s sound between Amsterdam and Detroit, the producer, the great, the Nighttripper. Past, present and future all together in one vinyl. Mastered and cut @ Dubplates & Mastering, Berlin.

RASTER-NOTON (GERMANY)

MASAAKI, UENO: Vortices 12" (R-N 117EP)14.00Dedicated to promoting young and evolving artists and to present musical diamonds-in-the-rough, Raster-Noton is curating the "Unun" series, whose name derives from the atomic numbers of the chemical elements 111-119. Vortices is Ueno Masaaki's first release on Raster-Noton, and the seventh release of this series. Ueno Masaaki takes his musical cue from natural phenomenon and the laws of nature by trying to reconstruct them, not simulate them. The results are mainly rhythmical patterns that set off a chain reaction, expanding and contracting and creating new formations all the time.

ROCKADROME

TRUTH AND JANEY: Erupts! 2LP (ROCK 050LP)30.00"Raw crushing live recordings from 1976 by one of the Midwest's heaviest power trios of all time!!! The live recordings featured on Erupts! were originally released posthumously in the early 90s on a long out of print double album. It was also previously released by Rockadrome on compact disc minus a few tracks, now it's back, re-mastered for vinyl by Tony Reed (Mos Generator, Saint Vitus, Stoneaxe) and in its entirety. Now you can once again drop the needle and hear Billylee Janey plug in his '64 Gibson Firebird, power up his Marshall stacks, flip on his Echoplex and Univibe and take you on a journey back to 70s heavy rock nirvana. Steve Bock is there too, pumping out wicked Bruce/Bogert styled bass thump, along with Denis Bunce, holding it all together with his heavy handed skin work. It all adds up to one sweet trip back in time to a hazy nightclub in 1976 with Truth and Janey lighting the place on fire! Re-designed for the Vintage label with colorized artwork; including an 11x17 poster."

RUNE GRAMMOFON (NORWAY)

SUPERSILENT: 11 CD (RCD 2103CD)17.00CD version -- previously only available on vinyl. In 2007 Supersilent celebrated 10 years as a groundbreaking quartet with their first studio album in almost 5 years. As with Supersilent 6 (RCD 2029CD), Supersilent 8 was recorded during a five-day studio session in Athletic Sound in Halden, Norway, the all-analog facility where other great-sounding Rune Grammofon albums like Supersilent 1-3 (RCD 2001CD), Scorch Trio, Luggumt and Raus Aus Stavanger were recorded. From the monumental hardcore blizzard storm of 1-3 to the elegant electro-jazz of 4 and from the quiet soundscapes of 5 to the epic 6, Supersilent yet again re-invented themselves with 8 (RCD 2067CD), an album that to a certain degree explored more abstract and mysterious pathways beyond categories and comparisons. In fact, these sessions turned out to be so fruitful that producer Deathprod finished five hours of music and at one point considered making it another triple CD. In the end, 68 minutes ended up on Supersilent 8, but it was always understood that more of the excellent music that didn't make it to the final cut would appear in one way or another at a later time, and indeed, here it is as 11. This was also Jarle Vespestad's final studio session. Since the very beginning, Supersilent have always moved forward with the greatest integrity. Supersilent music is collective work, total group improvising, and not a matter of individual grandstanding. They never rehearse as a group and don't discuss the music with each other, meeting only to play concerts or to record. Every recording and every concert is a unique occasion, not to be repeated, and their music lives in a no-man's-land between the genres, somewhere between rock, electronica, jazz and modern composition. It can sometimes appear to be written or at least arranged, again making it clear that these musicians communicate on a high, almost telepathic level. Supersilent was formed in Oslo in 1997 after producer, musician and sound artist Helge Sten approached improvising trio Veslefrekk with the idea of forming a new quartet. The first time they played together was a concert at Bergen Jazz Festival the same year. Their first album, the triple set 1-3 was released in late '97, also being the first release on Rune Grammofon. Members include: Helge Sten (audio virus, electric guitar), Ståle Storløkken (synthesizers, keyboards), Arve Henriksen (trumpet, voice, electronics), and Jarle Vespestad (drums).

SMERALDINA RIMA (BELGIUM)

PANICSVILLE: A Dragonfly for Each Corpse LP + 7" (S-R 010LP)32.00A Dragonfly for Each Corpse is a record that stands no daylight. A feverish nightmare of an album, dragging us into a brown paper bag -- ferocious cannibal jungle ambience seeping through -- 'til we're cast down some stairs into a cellar made out of spit. A twirling folk-ballad sung by a ghost made out of chewing gum turns into a symphony of typing fingers, ticking clocks and slamming car doors, like a noirish soundtrack to the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, accompanied by squeaking stuffed animals as eyewitnesses.

EXTRA SEXES: Spiral Mirror LP (S-R 016LP)25.502011 release. Extra Sexes is AG Davis, a sound poet, writer, performance artist, and composer from Jacksonville, Florida. Spiral Mirror is the third release under his current moniker, following several years of activity as Boy + Girl. A relentlessly aggressive disc of stripped-down dark electro-noise, sprinkled with some kinder moments. You'll need to go outside for a minute after this one! Edition of 300 in a cyan and magenta screen-printed sleeve featuring artwork by Tessa Deceuninck.

MONK, ALEX: The Safety Machine 2LP (S-R 017LP)32.002010 release. Drenched in a frozen, hypnotic melancholy, The Safety Machine is a double-LP tour de force by London-based musician and producer Alex Monk. Incorporating '70s kraut-synth psychedelia, cosmic ambient drones, and haunting melodies into an ambitious framework of multi-layered sonic bleakness with hints of early Eno, Klaus Schultze, Robert Wyatt, and Moondog. Monk creates a world that's filled with loss, loneliness, and ethereal beauty -- staring into the abyss while the icecaps are hugging your skull... Hand-numbered edition of 310 with a screen-printed open sleeve. Includes MP3 download voucher.

THROW DOWN YOUR HAMMER AND SING/SHELDON SIEGEL: Throw Down Your Hammer and Sing/Sheldon Siegel LP (S-R 022LP)25.502013 release. Two sides split between two bands. The A-side features American trio Throw Down Your Hammer and Sing, consisting of Nate Wooley on trumpet, Fred Lonberg-Holm on cello and electronics, and Jason Roebke on bass. On the B-side is Belgian trio Sheldon Siegel, made up of Erik Heestermans on percussion, Gerard Herman on saxophone, Gino Coomans on cello, and all three on several other instruments. Screen-printed open sleeve on heavy white stock; screen-printed insert on heavy black stock. Housed in a heavy PVC sleeve. Pressing of 380 copies on heavy black vinyl. Heavy! Two sides of grainy textures and truly happening improv.

INWOLVES: Air+ 10" (S-R 023LP)25.50When it comes to music, Karen Willems is an all-embracing soul. Best known as the percussionist of Yuko and Stef Kamil Carlens' Zita Swoon, she has manned the skins for a myriad of other artists: Delvaux, Nive Nielsen, Silver Junkie, and Kaboom Karavan, to name a few. With an eclectic resume of projects under her belt, Willems finally embarked on a more personal sonic journey in 2012: Inwolves. This is quite a different animal, a pet project bred in Willems' attic from her own artistic vision. With Air+, her debut release as Inwolves, Willems captures alluring, otherworldly sounds inspired by Meetjesland, a countryside area between Ghent and Bruges renowned for its vast, dynamic landscape architecture of forests, polders, creeks, and watercourses. Ominous yet soothing, the interweaving synth layers of bandmates Jürgen de Blonde and Ward Dupan coincide towards a primal rhythmic surge. But make no mistake: Inwolves doesn't draw much on traditional song structures, if at all. Includes download code.

MONK, ALEX: Indiscreet Mirror LP (S-R 024LP)25.502013 release. Indiscreet Mirror is London-based musician and producer Alex Monk's eagerly-awaited follow-up to 2010's The Safety Machine (S-R 017LP). The album features guests Gavan Kearny (Sand Snowman), Gareth Jones, and Steve Dowle, as well as an impressive array of instruments including the Novation Bass Station, the Casio SK-1, and a 17-string Vietnamese zither. As with previous outings, Indiscreet Mirror is a somber, melancholy affair, but this time around there's a marked organic feeling driven by acoustic instruments and voice. Rife with experimentation, the album explores pastoral folk terrain, while maintaining the tuneful kosmische vibe of The Safety Machine. At its best, it combines the two worlds to impressive psychedelic effect. Screen printed sleeve in two versions on heavy white stock, housed in a heavy PVC sleeve. Edition of 200 copies on gorgeous heavy translucent white vinyl.

GATE, THE: Stench LP (S-R 028LP)25.50Since forming in 2008, The Gate, the trio made up of Dan Peck on tuba and amplifier, Tom Blancarte on electric upright bass, and Brian Osborne on percussion, have forged a unique and uncompromising aesthetic. The Gate seek to break down and confuse the conventional roles of a horn-bass-drums ensemble, revealing the most raw and elemental aspects of organized sound. Their music, dividing time between improvisation and Peck's compositions, ranges from bleak landscapes of near-silence to massive, horrifying sound sculptures. With three international tours and three albums under their belt, The Gate now present Stench, their fourth studio album. Recorded by engineering wizard Colin Marston at his Thousand Caves Studio in Queens, New York, it features new friends Nate Wooley on trumpet and amplifier and Tim Dahl on electric bass. The album is in many ways a continuation of the band's gloom-jazz stylings, but Wooley's impeccable sense of extemporaneous composition and Dahl's psychedelic brand of bizarro-funk provide incomparable additions to the brooding nature of the music, making Stench the gnarliest and blackest experience yet from The Gate. High-quality heavy vinyl housed in an open screen printed sleeve on heavy stock. Edition of 300.

SOMA (UK)

SLAM: Reverse Proceed CD (SOMA 105CD)15.50Electronic music pioneers Slam return to their home base of Soma with their brand-new album, Reverse Proceed. After tireless months in the studio, the Glaswegian duo are ready to unleash what is easily their best body of work to date. Not only does this album capture where the two are at musically at the moment, but is an extension of their unending fascination with all things Electronic. Lending their 22 years of experience to this new project, Slam have delved into the past for inspiration while simultaneously heralding future technologies in the production process. Conceptually, Slam wanted to have the human experience in mind when recording and to base the architecture of the album around "the sequence." This led them to a locally-built hardware sequencer called the "Sequentix Cirklon" that became the heart of the album. Allowing them to access older machines and also a modern modular synth set-up simultaneously, Stuart & Orde merged live manipulation and recording techniques to full potential to bring soul to the album. Reverse Proceed is more than an album; it is a well-defined experience built on the principle of the sequence. Having been meticulously woven together to create a seamless listening environment, Reverse Proceed aims to capture the audience and guide them through the sonic landscape of the album. This method allowed Slam to fully explore the concept of the album being more than just a collection of tracks but rather a thoroughly immersible piece. With this concept in mind, the album's opening drifts in over the course of several tracks as the malevolent "Tokyo Subway" opens what is the ambient first third of the album. Tension is built through sweeping pads and dubbed-out synths, leading perfectly into the more delicate "Visual Capture," where a sea of field recorded rain splashes over subtle bell tones and dream-state strings. The title-track begins with intensity as pulsing sub-bass fills the void with yet more time-induced percussive fluctuations though synthesis, the haunting pads giving more depth to this deep, evolving track. The hardware at the center of the album takes hold now as "Cirklon Bells" brings a slight edge of melancholy to proceedings. Heavenly pads bring "Synchronicity" into existence as we hear the first semblance of a 4/4 make its way out of the depths of the ambience. "Ghosts of Detroit" stamps that typical Slam sound on the album. This ode to the Motor City sees an almighty melodic upheaval as tones begin to form complete harmonious coexistence and the album sees the shift into a more dancefloor-oriented state of being. The ethereal interlude of "Relevant Question" proves to be little respite, as "Pattern A3" stomps in with flourishing modular-based sequential tones and sparse, kicking 909 drums -- the album's defining heads-down techno moment. Tweeked-out, delayed and cerebral, "Factory Music" continues on perfectly as yet more off-kilter sequences makes heads spin with its subtle use of FX and crisp percussion. The wail of "Convolute" keeps things in check as discord swells enough to keep you ready for the solid and hypnotic "Catacoustics." Dark and brooding, it sets the tone for "Irritant," with its broken beat and roomy percussion riding spaced-out, otherworldly forces. "Rotary" helps see the album out with its elastic synths and driving rhythms, showing Slam's credentials as straight-up dance-floor killers. As we finally wind down from the journey, we are brought into great depths with the sublime "Resolved." Modern techno albums come and go, but the dynamic duo of Stuart McMillan & Orde Meikle have once again raised the bar for the world of techno.

ZINGER & DON ROGALL, EARL: Vol. 1 10" (STAGO 055LP)18.00This is the first of two 10"s. Deep down from the swamp delta of Berlin, D.C., and straight outta Gin Lane, Londinium: The feral stepsons of carpet dealers and long-forgotten record sellers, Don Rogall and Earl Zinger, with their long-awaited debut. The music: rock 'n blues, dealing with some nasty boogie, jive, and ingredients of exotic origin -- a new breed of juke joint anthems. All efforts have been made to make this release possible, it took years to distill these tunes out of live performances and studio recordings. Already solid hits in the Berlin underground, these releases on Stag-O-Lee are a document of something that otherwise would have been left to the "oral culture" -- forever.

STAUBGOLD (GERMANY)

ENSAMBLE POLIFONICO VALLENATO/SEXTETO LA CONSTELACION DE COLOMBIA: Fiesta, Que Viva La CD (STAUB 134CD)17.00The first-ever release of mythic Colombian groups Ensamble Polifonico Vallenato and Sexteto La Constelacion De Colombia. A full-length album of exclusive archive recordings featuring members of the Meridian Brothers, Frente Cumbiero, Ondatropica, Romperayo and Los Piranas. Bland rock and pop music took over Colombia in the 1980s. For a country with so much musical heritage, this was blasphemy. Ensamble Polifonico Vallenato and Sexteto La Constelacion de Colombia were two groups who, in the late 90s, fought to redress the balance. Ensamble Polifonico Vallenato started as a joke, a parody of the bad vallenato music a bunch of university students would hear on the bus into campus. Their idea was simple: "to play whatever and see what happens." The resultant music was as heavy as rock, as acidic as punk and as far-out as the most left-field free-jazz. At the heart of it all was fiery accordion and acerbic vocals, often playing in call-and-response, just like the classic vallenatos of yore. The lyrics formed a big part of the group's identity; they were deep, sarcastic and surrealistic, and revelled in toying with Colombian clichés. The music soon stopped being a parody. The students began to learn more and more about Colombian folklore and their sound evolved. Soon, they ditched the accordion, replacing it with flutes from Colombia's Caribbean coast, and renamed the group Sexteto La Constelacion de Colombia. The musicians were now more mature, though no less experimental. Both groups were rebellious, counter-cultural and added to their reputations with anarchic live shows. At the time, the reaction was mixed. To quote the group, they were "approved by a few but disapproved by a lot." For many musicians who saw them play during their short lifespans, they offered an alternative, a new form of Colombian music that was rooted in their country's heritage but could be as innovative and experimental as any jazz or rock. A seed was sown that started a new branch of Colombian tropical music. The band members now play in groups like Meridian Brothers, Frente Cumbiero, Ondatropica, Romperayo and Los Piranas -- bands that have released albums and toured internationally, as well as won critical and public approval while maintaining the revolutionary spirit that will ensure that the evolution of Colombian music is not ready to stop yet.

STUDIO BARNHUS (SWEDEN)

NAPHTA: Palm Trees Love EP 12" (BARN 024EP)14.00Debut release on Studio Barnhus from Pawel Klimczak aka Naphta. This Thomas Mann-readin', Sun Ra-diggin' young Pole made "Palm Trees Love" and "Spring Ball" so we could all keep the magic summer of 2014 blazin' just a little bit longer. Simon Haydo delivers a deadly remix of "Spring Ball," reworking the nice & bouncy original into a warehouse-maddening techno missile with that extra Haydo twist.

SUB ROSA (BELGIUM)

GERHARD, ROBERTO: Electronic Explorations from His Studio + The BBC Radiophonic Workshop 1958-1967 CD (SR 378CD)15.50Part of Sub Rosa's Early Electronics series. During the 1950s and 1960s, Roberto Gerhard gathered a significant magnetic tape collection in his home studio, creating a major repository of early electronic sound recordings of his own works. The pieces on this record present a complex set of challenges for audio restoration, requiring a complete understanding of his compositional process and allowing the spirit and vitality of his electronic work to speak clearly to the listener. The versions of the pieces you will hear on this record represent an attempt to present Gerhard's musical thoughts as free as possible from distracting technical deficiencies that obscure the musical content of the tapes. To this end a number of processes have been employed to reduce tape hiss and broadband noise, clicks, crackle, mains hum, tape splices and low frequency thuds, ranging from automated algorithms to a more painstaking manual clean-up of the audio spectrum. Every process of musical audio restoration must seek a compromise between the removal of elements that are problematic to the modern listener, and the preservation of the vital sonic and musical characteristics of the recordings. Roberto Gerhard (b. 1896; d. 1970) was born in Valls, Spain. Initially he studied piano with Granados and composition with Felipe Pedrell. When Pedrell died in 1922, Gerhard moved to Vienna as a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg. Returning to Barcelona in 1928, he became a central figure in the Catalonian avant-garde, befriending such figures as Pablo Casals and Joan Miró. Identified with the Republican cause throughout the Spanish Civil War, Gerhard was forced to flee to France in 1939 and later that year settled in Cambridge, England. Once in England, Gerhard produced a series of orchestra and stage works that would establish his international reputation. The Symphony (in memory of Pedrell), the ballet Don Quixote, First String Quartet, and the opera The Duenna followed in quick succession. In the 1950s Gerhard developed his musical style, synthesizing Schoenbergian serialism with Catalan folksong. These years also marked him out as the first composer in England to engage seriously with electronic music. Gerhard worked extensively at the newly-formed BBC Radiophonic Workshop producing a series of abstract electronic works as well as electronic music for stage -- most notably his score for the 1955 Royal Shakespeare Production of King Lear. The last decade of his life saw Gerhard's musical language evolve still further and the composition of late masterpieces such as the Symphony No. 3 "Collages" which includes a significant tape part, Symphony No. 4 "New York," the chamber symphony Leo, and the masterly Concerto for Orchestra. CD Digipak + 28-page booklet.

SUPERIOR VIADUCT

FONTAINE, BRIGITTE: Brigitte Fontaine LP (SV 043LP)20.00"Never one to settle on a single musical style, Brigitte Fontaine followed up her debut, Est?Folle, and her astonishing collaboration with The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Comme à la Radio, with the most eclectic release of her lengthy career, 1972's Brigitte Fontaine. It is telling that Fontaine chose an eponymous title for her third album, the sole release from her venerable '70s catalogue attributed to her alone. Here the actress-cum-singer has finally arrived. From the introspective opening track, simply named 'Brigitte,' seductive melodies perfectly hang above slithery bass lines and acoustic strumming. On 'Moi Aussi,' a sparse and trance-like duet with long-time collaborator Areski, Fontaine muses, 'They put me in a cage and after they told me 'You fly down.'' Brigitte Fontaine is an unmatched European art-pop masterpiece anchored by both vocal and lyrical dexterity?in many ways, Fontaine's most compelling work and an excellent entry point for those unfamiliar with this unique French icon."

THE BUNKER NEW YORK

FORMA: Cool Haptics EP 12" (BK 009EP)11.50Forma's combustible mixture of lush synth explorations and frenetic rhythm has captivated the margins of the international synth scene since their acclaimed 2011 debut on John Elliott's Spectrum Spools label. Following 2012's OFF/ON, the trio set a direct course toward the shadowy perimeter of the dancefloor, with John Also Bennett replacing original member Sophie Lam. They recently revealed that they had been working on music that didn't really fit into an album format, but would work as a 12" aimed more at dancefloor audiences -- and that's what you have here: two epic 15-minute tracks of blissed-out kosmische techno.

WIRE, THE: #369 November 2014 MAG/CD (WIRE 369)9.50"The Wire Tapper 36 -- the next volume in our series of world-beating underground music comps will be neatly positioned on the cover of every copy of the September issue, promising another cornucopia of occult audio delights. On the cover: Richard Dawson (The Newcastle singer and guitarist weaves his songs from the landscapes and social histories of North East England); inside this issue: Alfred 23 Harth (Born in Germany and based in Korea, the multi-instrumentalist and artist reflects on a life spent crossing borders); The Primer: Autechre remixes (From Merzbow and Earth to LFO and Surgeon, a user's guide to the Sheffield duo's radical reworkings); Invisible Jukebox: Cooly G (The London producer and vocalist goes in hard against The Wire's mystery record selection); Cross Platform: Moniek Darge (Nick Cain Enters the playful workshop of the Belgian performer, composer and recordist."

TOMPKINS SQUARE

JONES, BESSIE: Get in Union 2CD (TSQ 5074CD)22.00"Produced by Grammy-nominated Curator of the Alan Lomax Archive, Nathan Salsburg. Features 26 previously unreleased tracks. Unheard collaborations with Rev. Gary Davis, Sweet Papa Stovepipe, Mable Hillery and others. Remastered from Lomax's original tapes. Bessie Jones was one of the most popular performers on the 1960s and '70s folk circuit, appearing -- usually at the helm of the Georgia Sea Island Singers -- at colleges, festivals, the Poor People's March on Washington, and Jimmy Carter's inauguration. Get in Union is a collection of her classic recordings with the Singers, combined with many previously unavailable solo and small-group performances captured by Alan Lomax between 1959 and 1966. Alan Lomax first visited the Georgia Sea Island of St. Simons in June of 1935 with folklorist Mary Elizabeth Barnicle and author Zora Neale Hurston. There they met the remarkable Spiritual Singers Society of Coastal Georgia, as the group was then called, and recorded several hours of their songs and dances for the Library of Congress. Returning 25 years later, Lomax found that the Singers wer still active, and had been enriched by the addition of Bessie Jones, a South Georgia native with a massive collection of songs going back to the slavery era. Over the next several years, Lomax and Jones worked together to present, promote, and teach Southern black folk song across the country, from nightclubs to elementary schools. Get in Union features freshly remastered audio from 24-bit digital transfers of Lomax's original tapes and notes by the Alan Lomax Archive's Nathan Salsburg and Anna Lomax Wood, who accompanied her father on his 1960 recordings of Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers."

TRESOR (BELGIUM)

DREXCIYA: Neptune's Lair CD (TRESOR 10129CD)17.002014 repress. Detroit's Drexciya, with their close ties to Underground Resistance, emerged in 1991. With an encoded agenda and socio-political mission aimed at the world, a new page of Drexciya's grand history was written entitled Neptune's Lair, featuring 21 exclusive tracks released in the fall of 1999. Drexciya is the sound of originality embodying all the musical styles and history that Detroit the city has seen and been part of. Drexciya is music for change that defies categorization; traditionally armed with freestyle electro, techno, funk, and jazz while covering an entire spectrum of moods ranging from the dark, foreboding "Intro" to the shimmering beauty of "Polymono Plexusgel." While words won't do Neptune's Lair proper justice, rootsy Kraftwerkian techno ("Universal Element" and "Oxyplasmic Gyration Beam"), gives way to G-style electro ("Fusion Flats" and "Andreaen Sand Dunes"), while jazzy freestyle funk ("Running Out Of Space" and "Funk Release Valve") evolves alongside classic 4/4 club sound ("Species Of The Pod," "Devil Ray Cove" and "Lost Vessel"). Although the roots run deep, Neptune's Lair heralded an important new chapter in the musical connections between Detroit's finest and Tresor.

TRUNK (UK)

LACEY, BRUCE: The Spacey Bruce Lacey: Film Music and Improvisations CD (JBH 053CD)16.50Bruce Lacey is the quintessential British eccentric. Bruce Lacey is an artist, a musician, a filmmaker, a shaman, a genius and visionary. Since the 1950s he's made film, music, art and performances, and collaborated with everyone from The Beatles to Throbbing Gristle. He was part of the groundbreaking Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition in 1968. He even built a robot that won the Alternative Miss World. This is the first time his extraordinary music has been released. Made and recorded using household objects as well as a modified synthesizer (made by a schoolboy in the early 1970s), it ranges from abstract tribal concrète to droning electronic trance. Bruce Lacey has been a busy man. Since the 1950s he's been making film, making music, making art, sculpture, rituals, performances, and more besides. Many of his films have explored the basics of life and sex all with a sprinkle of irony, realism and ritualism. Many of his films have required music, music which Lacey made himself, improvising with bottles, rattles, typewriters and a tape machine. By the early 1970s, Lacey was exploring stone circles and ancient rights; he'd also bought a home-made synthesizer from a schoolboy who'd advertised it in Exchange & Mart. He'd made it as a home project. A week later Lacey bought a keyboard from another schoolboy in Exchange & Mart. Lacey set about slowly modifying this synth and improvising music influenced by his stone circle visits over the next few years. This music is made only when "The Muse" descends. It is impossible for Bruce to perform this improvised music live. The music he made was occasionally available on cassette at his exhibitions in the 1970s. The late Poly Styrene (who had a copy) compared Lacey's music to Tangerine Dream. Lacey had not heard of Tangerine Dream. This is the first time this raw and extraordinary music by one of the UK's most extraordinary men has been made available. CD housed in a jewel case with a large 16-page booklet including full-color rare photos and an essay by BFI/Flipside archivist Will Fowler.

EDGAR, JIMMY: Saline 12" (LUX 012EP)12.50Saline is the third installment in a series of records from Ultramajic boss Jimmy Edgar. Saline is aligned with earth -- specifically to the earthly compound salt, as desalination is an integral metaphysical process that helps to hone the third eye. "Burn" is a blazing, acid-tinged banger that boasts dry drums and a strangled wail. "Decalcify" invokes a process closely related to desalination, as both play a role in making the body more attuned to supernatural experiences. DJ Rashad's voice can be heard in the sampled squawk on metallic tune "Walk Show," and "Who's Watching" features Jimmy's vocals, coy bleep-bloop instrumentation and hissing hi-hats.

DJ W!LD: When You Feel Me 2CD (W 002CD)17.00After a two-year hiatus from full-length album production, Parisian-born Circoloco favorite and DC10 resident DJ W!LD catapults himself back into the heady realm of studio creativity with his LP When You Feel Me, clocking in at no less than an eye-watering 27 tracks. With this aptly-named LP, W!LD demands your attention, narrating his story through a series of juxtaposing genres, and complex cuts. Heavy beats and warm vocals call as an alluring invitation, his tracks offering laidback disco-fringed grooves and gradual build-ups that portray his assiduous attention to detail, and betray a melancholic depth that bubbles consistently under the surface. The textured patterns of "Rue De Paradis" offer a nod to his Parisian underground roots, while the softer Balearic notes in "Quand Tu Te Touches" leave the listener in no doubt that W!LD has truly bared his soul. Both CDs present a tug of war between genres. W!LD blends disco with tech house before teetering on the edge of big room techno with heavyweight bass lines: "I just have a very creative flow at the moment," W!LD explains. "The current double album reflects my more housey, sexy, summer side on one part, and a darker techno sound on the other." Never lacking in creative composition, he continues to stray away from the unexpected, injecting poignant chords with the electricity he conjures on DC10's Terrace as a Circoloco resident. W!LD's career continues to flourish, and When You Feel Me brilliantly encompasses the ever-evolving sound of this enigmatic Parisian.

WATER WING

POISON GIRLS, THE: Chappaquiddick Bridge LP + 7" (WW 011LP)17.00"Chappaquiddick Bridge, the band's first full length, was originally released on Crass Records in 1980 and featured the same lineup as Hex. And like Hex, it shared the producer/engineer team of Penny Rimbaud and John Loder. This record sees Poison Girls at their most experimental stage. The songs dig deeper into the connections between the personal and political. Starting with an uncredited version of 'State Control' (one of the bands punkiest crowd pleasers) done in an 'unplugged' style, and ending with the similarly stripped down 'Tender Lover', this album broke all the rules of what a 'punk' album should sound like. The songs are long. There are extended sonic workouts and codas, using synths, abused studio effects, electric violin, acoustic piano as well as 'random' electric guitar sounds and vocals. The mix has thundering drums up front that power the songs, and help create a barrage of rich sound. The lyrics speak of love, power, sexual politics, war and peace and most things in between. This is Vi at her most poetic, but with a razor sharp insight, and not holding back on using it. A truly original album. If it was removed, lost or destroyed, your original copy of Chappaquiddick Bridge came with a one-sided flexi disc containing the anthem 'Statement'. This 2014 reissue also includes 'Statement' as a proper one-sided 7" vinyl. Sturdy tip-on gatefold cover."

WHEN IN DOUBT (UK)

2562: The New Today CD (DOUBT 003CD)14.50Under the 2562 codename, Dutchman Dave Huismans aka A Made Up Sound has been integral to deviant dancefloors since 2007. The otherworldly yet lifelike The New Today is 2562's fourth album and presents his first new material in this guise since 2012's Air Jordan EP, which was also self-released on his When In Doubt imprint. As with that last EP, The New Today was sketched out during a trip abroad -- a six week stay in New York in late summer 2013 -- and later arranged at his home studio in Utrecht, The Netherlands. Composed as a narrative collage drawing upon and splicing from an eclectic library of early European synth experiments, new age tapes, musique concrète, Krautrock, post-punk, obscure electro-pop and other largely forgotten and out of print music, The New Today loosely references the novel of ideas tradition of writing as a restless, eight-track drift bolstered and propelled by his signature texturhythms. From the humid concrète drone sphere of "Arrival" through the hypnotizing gyrations of "Terraforming," to the airborne rhythmelodies and mercurial syncopation of "Vibedoctor" and centerpiece "Utopia," the tension and conflict of aural assault "Drumroll" and ultimately the celestial sweep of closing chapter, "New Life," it's equally the most diffuse, cohesive and involving LP in his celebrated cache.

MCCABE, SEAN: It's Time CD (ZEDD 033CD)15.50Joey Negro's tastemaking and scene-defining disco-house label Z Records is proud to announce its next full-length release, namely a debut album from Sean McCabe entitled It's Time. It's an LP that bucks the modern trend and shows up many of its peers by being one that is made of wholly original material, sounds and ideas, rather than one that leans on tired and classic samples. This lush and musical 12-track affair is Sean's first big solo project and it has been in the works for almost three years. Written mostly in his Bristol studio, the LP features a wealth of international collaborations -- Jennifer Wallace, Diane Charlemagne, Renn -- and has been made primarily on real hardware such as the Fender Rhodes, SH-09, Juno 106, Poly 61, JV-1010, EMU Vintage Keys and the Moog Slim Phatty. Sean, who has been producing since his teens and includes fine labels like U.S. garage staple King Street Sounds, Defected, Strictly Rhythm and Local Talk in his discography says of the album: "It was important for me to get it perfected to my original vision, and to keep that vision throughout was difficult. I've literally drawn inspiration from everything that's influenced me as producer and writer over the years. I always wanted to create something that demonstrates all my tastes in soulful dance music, which can be influenced by so many subgenres like hip-hop, disco, jazz, soul, deep house, U.S. garage, etc. The NuYorican Soul album has always been a benchmark for me in terms of a perfectly constructed album and is something I never get tired of listening to." Those influences shine though in this fantastically musical and deeply considered album: it bares all the hallmarks of a proper full-length that has been built from the ground up with fantastic arrangements, catchy vocals and real song structures. "Everything's Alright" opens the album in glorious style, with retro-tastic and sing along vocals, well-defined and authentic house production and plenty of feel-good chords. From there, there's skipping and soulful house like "Something About You," diva vocal cuts like "Holding On" and blessed-out dance-pop nuggets like "Tomorrow's Another Day." The good vibes continue from start to finish with many highlights along the way, such as the sultry and seductive deep garage house of "Want Me" and classically-inclined joys of "Love for Life." The production values are sky-high on this album, and though it might have been a long time in the making, it was worth it, because it categorically proves that now really is Sean McCabe's time.

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